Anne Heche made her TV debut in the 1980s on the late and still-lamented soap Another World.ACCLAIMED FILM, television and theater actor, Anne Heche, made her TV debut in the 1980s on the late and still-lamented soap Another World. She played the oft-love-tossed twins Marley Love Hudson McKinnon and Victoria 'Vicky' Hudson Frame Harrison McKinnon.
I asked Heche once during a break on the set of AW if it was especially difficult to play twin sisters. She said, "Not really," adding that the point was not to play them as the same person, "they're individuals who just happen to have more in common with each other than most people."
She also said that twins in her audience had told her that aside from all the other good things about coming into the world together is that they're never lonely: Even when separated, twins have a sense of each other wherever they are.
Fast-forward some 15 years, and the word 'lonely' once again takes on significance in my most recent chat with Heche about her new Lifetime movie, Fatal Desire, airing April 3 and co-starring Eric Roberts (ex-Ted Bancroft, AW, 1977).
"People often never fully realise what drives them to do what they do," Heche says. "My character, Tanya, is married and has children. But she's bored and uses her sex appeal to bring some excitement into her life. She goes online and meets Joe (Roberts) in a chat room. He's a single father and a recovering alcoholic. They get together and nothing will ever be as important to them as their need to possess and protect each other."
Heche says the tragedy that proceeds from that fateful meeting online is driven by one simple but powerful impulse: the fear of being alone.
"We are not meant to be lonely. Loneliness can be deadly."
Heche's observation is confirmed by psychiatrists, who say that loneliness can destroy the mind and the body. And she notes that in a real sense, what they're seeking is survival. Together they can make it; separated, they can't.
Finding each other online may seem like a romantic happening where dreams can come true.
"Maybe so," Heche says. "But when you go online, you don't see or sense the dangers. It's like a game, only you never really know what the rules are or how you'll wind up."
Heche continues: "It's easier to lie online, to deceive, and to be manipulated by someone like Tanya, who knows how to use her sexuality to get what she wants."
Heche notes that the Internet has created a means of bringing lonely people together, people who are most vulnerable to being hurt because they so desperately want to find the "happily ever after" miracle.
"When it's just you and the other person," she says, "it's easy to believe in the fairy tale and shut out the reality."
As the movie's promotion ads tell us, Tanya and Joe mistake lust for love. And they keep on making mistakes, each one leading to another one, telling themselves that they have to do whatever they need to do to protect themselves and each other, "and eventually, it all catches up with them."
In the nearly two decades since Heche left daytime, she's won or been nominated for some of the entertainment world's most coveted awards, including the Emmy and the Tony. She also wrote a best-selling autobiography, Call Me Crazy, in 2001, and wrote and directed a short feature for Showtime's First Director Series. In her private life she's the wife of cameraman Coley Laffoon and the mother of six-year-old Homer Heche Laffoon.
After some turbulent years dealing with difficult issues, Anne Heche has apparently found her path in life and walks it with a strong, determined stride. And while the world at large honors her accomplishments, it was the daytime audience that first recognized her talents and remained among the most steadfast of her fans. Perhaps the next chapter in her autobiography will begin with the words, "It all started in Bay City ..."
