Before becoming a topic of late nighttalk show monologues, Heche had already proven herself as an actress. The daughter of a Baptist minister who was a closet homosexual and succumbed to AIDS complications in 1983 (although Heche has hinted he committed suicide in interviews), the thin wide-eyed performer began her career as a singer and dancer in dinner theater. After her father's death, Heche did not perform for several years until graduating from high school. Within weeks, she had landed her first major role, that of good and evil twins, Vicky and Marly on the NBC soap opera "Another World". During her four year stint, Heche earned a Daytime Emmy as Outstanding Younger Actress in 1991 and engaged in a high profile romance with her co-star Richard Burgi.

Feeling stifled, Heche decided to leave the show after four years and enroll at the Parsons School of Design. Instead, she landed a role alongside Jessica Lange in the CBS production "O Pioneers!" (1992) and decided to concentrate on an acting career. Film roles soon followed, including her debut as Mary Jane Wilks in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1993). She gradually landed larger roles in "I'll Do Anything" (1994) and the TV-movies "Against the Wall" (HBO, 1994), as Kyle MacLachlan's wife, and "Kingfish: A Story of Huey Long" (TNT, 1995), as the politician's mistress. Heche landed the breakthrough role of a doctor friend of Demi Moore who falls victim to a hit man in "The Juror" (1996). She went to co-star with Catherine Keener in the indie "Walking and Talking' (also 1996) before landing the role of Johnny Depp's neglected wife in "Donnie Brasco" (1997). Later that year, Heche was teamed with Tommy Lee Jones in the disaster flick "Volcano" and won praise for her turn as a presidential advisor in Barry Levinson's political satire "Wag the Dog" (a role written for a man which Heche played with no changes to the dialogue). By the time of the latter's release, Heche and DeGeneres had taken their relationship public. While pundits fretted over what the disclosure might do to Heche's career, the actress pressed on landing co-starring roles with Harrison Ford in the romantic adventure "Six Days, Seven Nights" and Vince Vaughn in "Return to Paradise" (both 1998). She further solidified her rising star status by tackling the role of Marion Crane (again opposite Vaughn as Norman Bates) in a color remake of Hitchcock's classic "Psycho" (also 1998)

Heche's feature career cooled when her image as a lesbian interfered with being cast in conventional heterosexual roles. In 1999 she portrayed the skeptical daughter of a woman proposed as a candidate for sainthood in "The Third Miracle," rumors persisted that she was the model for the ruthlessly ambitious actress played by Heather Graham in Heche's ex-beau Steve Martin's comedy "Bowfinger" (1999), and she wrote and directed the "2000" segment of the Emmy-nominated HBO movie "If These Walls Could Talk 2" (2000), an anthology about the lesbian experience in America, with Degeneres and Sharon Stone as a couple trying to have a baby--however, after the film aired she and Degeneres called their relationship quits. Shortly after, Heche was discovered wandering in a confused state in Fresno, California, looking for a spaceship manned by aliens/angels and referring to herself as "Celestia"--she later admitted, in her 2001 memoir Call Me Crazy that she was on Ecstacy, and explained that her extraterrestrial leanings were the result of a psyche fractured since her youth, reportedly due to sexual abuse by her father, a closeted gay Baptist choir master who later died of AIDS. Heche's claims in the book, written in just six weeks, were denied by her family but, true or not, her revelations did seem to quickly stem the widespread ridicule that had been aimed her way. The actress was soon back in a heterosexual relationship, with Coleman Laffoon--a cameraman she met while filming a documentary about DeGeneres--married him and became pregnant with his child in short order.

As Heche's life seemed to settle back into a pattern of seeming normalcy, her career also got back on track. She had featured roles in the Denzel Washington thriller "John Q" and as Dr. Sterling in the long-delayed adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel's bestseller "Prozac Nation" (2001) and television writer-producer David E. Kelley cast her in a recurring role as Melanie West, the eccentric, tic-addled soul mate of John Cage (Peter MacNicol) during the 2000-2001 season. She also took over for Jennifer Jason Leigh in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama 'Proof' on Broadway in 2002. In 2004 she played a drug-addicted mother who neglects her children in the Lifetime movie "Gracie's Choice" and received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. That same year she joined the WB drama "Everwood," as a love interest for star Treat Williams on the small screen and appeared opposite Niccole Kidman in "Birth" on the big screen, and on the legit stage was nominated for Broadway's 2004 Tony Award as Best Actress (Play) for a revival of "Twentieth Century." Clearly, by the time she took on a recurring role on "Nip/Tuck" in 2005 as an ex-mob wife and Witness Protection Program subject who requires plastic surgery from Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and becomes involved with him, Heche had reclaimed a great deal of her once-tarnished professional luster.