Anne Heche says she was fired from a ‘multimillion-dollar picture deal’ because of her romance with Ellen DeGeneres
Anne Heche has opened up about her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres in the late 1990s, saying it negatively affected her movie career.
“In 1997, I met Ellen DeGeneres at the Vanity Fair party, and that was the night that changed my life forever,” Heche told her dancing partner Keo Motsepe on Monday’s episode of “Dancing with the Stars.”
Heche said that leading up to the red-carpet premiere of her 1997 movie “Volcano,” she told executives she would be taking DeGeneres as her guest and the response she got back was: “If I took Ellen, I would lose my Fox contract.”
“At that moment, she took my hand and said, ‘Do what they say,’ and I said, ‘No thanks,'” Heche recalled. “I took Ellen to the premiere, and I was ushered out before the movie even ended and was told I was not allowed to go to my own after-party for fear that they would get pictures of me with a woman.”
“I was in a relationship with Ellen DeGeneres for 3 1/2 years, and the stigma attached to that relationship was so bad that I was fired from my multimillion-dollar picture deal and I did not work in a studio picture for 10 years,” she told Motsepe.
Insider contacted Disney, which now owns Fox, for a comment but did not get a response.
Heche and DeGeneres broke up in 2000. During their time together, the two were one of only a few openly gay couples in Hollywood.
In the August issue of Mr. Warburton Magazine, Heche looked back fondly on her relationship with DeGeneres and what their relationship meant to people at the time.
