TV mega-star Ellen DeGeneres first met actress Anne Heche at the Vanity Fair Oscars party
in 1997.
It was basically love at first sight for the two Hollywood stars: They started dating very
soon after the event.
At the time of the party, DeGeneres had yet to publicly come out, but she made the big
announcement just days later.
The couple certainly experienced their fair share of controversy: they were the most famous
LGBTQ couple in Hollywood... at a time when such things were practically unheard of.
Reportedly, DeGeneres had a much harder time with the situation than Heche ever did.
The talk-show host told the Los Angeles Times in 2001,
"I didn't want to hold hands.
I had never done that in public.
And yet there was this attitude of, you know, 'You're going to be on the cover of Time magazine
and say you're gay but you're not going to hold hands?
You deserve to hold hands as much as Tom and Nicole.
Or Tom and Rita.'
So I have to take responsibility for participating in [that]."
Their romance ultimately didn't last.
They called it quits three and a half years into the relationship.
According to ABC News, their romance ended in late summer 2000... just weeks after they
were seen house-hunting in LA and looking as happy as ever.
So, what went wrong exactly?
At the time, the official statement Heche and DeGeneres released read like this:
"Unfortunately, we have decided to end our relationship.
It is an amicable parting, and we greatly value the 3 1/2 years we have spent together.
We hope everyone will respect our privacy through this difficult time."
Meanwhile, a source told ABC News that the relationship had simply run its course: Nothing
more, nothing less.
But in 2001, DeGeneres told the Los Angeles Times that the split had sent her reeling.
As she put it,
"[Heche] walked out the door and I haven't spoken to her since, I don't have the answers.
I would love to have them myself.
I would ask all of the questions that everyone else wants to ask....
I'm left with everybody else wondering what happened.
I don't know.
I really don't....
I feel betrayed."
DeGeneres told the newspaper that this was the first time that she'd ever had her heart
broken... and she claimed she didn't feel any sense of closure at all.
All these years later, neither DeGeneres nor Heche have revealed what really went wrong
in the relationship.
The day after the couple publicly announced their split, Heche reportedly started acting
rather strange and erratic.
According to InStyle,
"[She] showed up at the door of a stranger's home [...] and had an emotional breakdown,
requesting a shower and declaring herself God.
The homeowner called the authorities, and Heche was hospitalized."
In 2001, Heche opened up about her relationship with DeGeneres in an interview with Barbara
Walters, claiming that she had mental issues… and these issues apparently came from a history
of abuse at the hands of her father.
She also said the trauma caused her to compartmentalize herself into two separate personalities: The
other personality was apparently named Celestia.
"What could I do when I was Celestia?
I spoke a different language.
I spoke a different language that God and I spoke."
She told Walters,
"I'm not crazy.
But it's a crazy life.
I was raised in a crazy family and it took 31 years to get the crazy out of me."
She claims her troubled past led to her mental breakdown after her relationship with DeGeneres
ended, but she also fondly reminisced about the relationship, too.
In regards to the night she first met DeGeneres, Heche said,
"Her name was Ellen DeGeneres.
She was radiating.
I think at certain times in people's lives you just radiate an energy and a glow of fabulousness.
And that was her.
I had never seen anybody so lit up."
After the breakup, Heche didn't publicly date another woman… and DeGeneres was reportedly
the first woman Heche had ever dated in her life.
In fact, she told Barbara Walters that DeGeneres was the first woman she'd ever slept with,
saying that,
"I felt cared for...
I felt free to express a part of me that I had not been able to express with a man.
I felt sensuous and sexual the way I hadn't before."
At the time, Heche was married to cameraman Coleman "Coley" Laffoon.
But she told Walters that she wasn't limiting who she loved, quipping that:
"You fall in love with a person, not a sex."
Heche later went on to date and have a child with actor James Tupper, and they were together
until 2018.
Nevertheless, Heche clearly isn't interested in putting a label on her sexuality.
As she told Barbara Walters,
"I would never limit myself to saying I would be with a man or a woman."
Following their breakup, DeGeneres moved on, too: She dated actress and photographer Alexandra
Hedison for a bit before ultimately settling down with Arrested Development star Portia
de Rossi in 2004.
They've been together ever since.
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