Alec Baldwin is condemned for supporting ‘amazing’ Anne Heche after crash

Alec Baldwin is among stars who’ve been condemned for supporting Anne Heche after the actress crashed into a house after a 100mph joyride, allegedly while drunk. 

In a video posted to Instagram on Saturday, Baldwin called Heche ‘an amazingly talented woman’ as he asked his fans to send their ‘support and love’ to the 53-year-old actress who is currently in stable condition at a local hospital.

‘Hey, I just want to send out my best wishes and all my love to Anne Heche,’ said Baldwin, who is continuing to face scrutiny over his fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his film last year.

‘Anne is an old pal of mine,’ Baldwin said, adding: ‘There’s not a lot of women I’ve worked with that are brave in the way that Anne is brave.’

He then recalled how they both performed in Twentieth Century, a Broadway play for which Heche was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play. They also co-starred in the 1996 legal thriller The Juror.

‘She is an amazingly talented woman,’ Baldwin, 64, said of Heche.

‘I love you Anne, I love you and I think you are such a talented person. I hope everything is OK, I hope you come through this. My heart goes out to you.

‘I’m sorry you had this tragic thing happen to you, and I’m sending you all my love,’ he continued. ‘Everyone please join me please in sending their support and love to the wonderful Anne Heche. Thanks.’

But many took Baldwin to task over his support, with Instagram user LisaDoo50 among those who replied: ‘What about the people she almost killed? Is she more important?’ 

Peter Facinelli, Heche’s costar in 2021’s 13 Minutes, also shared a picture of the two of them on his Instagram Story captioned: ‘Praying for you and your beautiful family.’

And actress Rosanna Arquette tweeted: ‘Anne Heche is in the hospital severely burned from a car accident.

‘This is really tragic,’ Arquette wrote. ‘Pray for her.’

Heche’s ex, Big Little Lies actor James Tupper, who dated her for 10 years and shares a 13-year-old son with, also posted about the accident on Instagram, saying he and their son were hoping for a speedy recovery. 

‘Thoughts and prayers for this lovely woman, actress and mother tonight,’ he wrote. ‘we love you.’ 

But others online slammed Heche for smashing her car into a Mar Vista home at 90mph, causing the home to burn down.

She had earlier been pictured with what appeared to be a bottle of vodka in the cupholder of her Mini Clubman, and had spoken about drinking vodka with wine chasers in an episode of her podcast that was released hours before the crash.

‘She was drinking and driving,’ said Dennis Depew, an actor who has appeared in Live Free or Die Hard, ‘and considering that woman killed all those people yesterday on the corner of La Brea and Slauson for the same thing, drinking and driving.

‘Anne Heche needs to go to rehab ASAP,’ he said, suggesting: ‘She’ll probably get arrested and charged once they release her from the ER.’

Nathan Schneider, a political consultant, also tweeted: ‘She could have killed somebody.

‘Heche needs some serious mental health counseling before she hurts someone.’ 

Heche had been driving her blue Mini Clubman in the Mar Vista area of Los Angeles when she careered into a garage of an apartment complex, after possibly hitting a curb.

Locals rushed to help the stricken actress with one man demanding she get out of the car. She ignored the advice and restarted the ignition, slammed her car into reverse and sped off down the road at speed.

Pictures and video showed her looking dazed at the wheel after the first crash, with a witness capturing her with a bottle with a red top on it in her car.

She later quickly veered off the road again, smashed through a hedge and and rammed into a nearby home in the 1800 block of South Walgrove Avenue at 90mph. 

The blue Mini Cooper plowed 30 feet into the residence, but the homeowner was able to escape without injury.

She ran to a neighbor’s house for safety immediately following the crash, and spent the rest of the day there.

‘Luckily she didn’t get hurt and neither did her two dogs,’ neighbor Roy Morgen told ABC 7. ‘She happened to be sitting with them. 

‘She was just in the house with us to tell us that the dogs were sitting with her when the car came flying through, and the car stopped like two feet away from where she was sitting.’

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said her house is now left ‘uninhabitable,’ explaining that the impact of the vehicle caused ‘structural compromise’ and started a ‘heavy fire.’ 

Despite the speed of the smash and the intensity of the ensuing blaze, Heche was still conscious and able to speak as she was pulled from the wreckage, Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Erik Scott told ABC 7 in the aftermath.

‘When we arrived on the scene, we had a solo vehicle that appeared to be driving at a high rate of speed on a perpendicular street and launched through the front yard into the home,’ 

Scott said Heche, a mom-of-two, was trapped in her car as the flames began to spread, but noted: ‘She was talking to us at the time that we were able to pull her out, so that’s a good sign.’

Authorities had to use a crane to pull Heche out from the flaming vehicle, a neighbor who witnessed the crash told NBC 4.

She is understood to have battled scorching heat in the burning vehicle for up to 30 minutes before 59 firefighters arrived to drag her to safety.   

Heche was later recorded being dragged out of the mangled wreck by firefighters after her car burst into flames mid-morning on Friday.

She could be seen writhing around on the stretcher before she was bundled into the back of an ambulance and rushed to a nearby intensive care unit.

Shocking images also show the burnt out wreckage of her Mini Clubman as it was towed out of a hedge across the road from a school in the Mar Vista area.

And video captured by a doorcam shows the vehicle owned by the actress speeding down a Mar Vista street moments before crashing into a home, sparking the blaze.

The Los Angeles Fire Department said it took 59 firefighters 65 minutes to put out the ‘stubborn flames’ and ‘rescue one female adult found within the vehicle.’

Heche is now said to be ‘stable’ following the fiery crash, a representative of her family told People Magazine.

‘Her family and friends ask for your thoughts and prayers and to respect her privacy during this difficult time,’ the rep said.

Heche’s ex-boyfriend Thomas Jane also previously told DailyMail.com she is ‘expected to pull through’ but remains intubated in the hospital.

Jane, 53, also paid an emotional tribute to her, saying despite the fact they are no longer together he offers her his ‘thoughts and prayers’ and credited her ‘one of the true talents of her generation’.

Heche is a mother to two sons – Homer, with cameraman ex-husband Coleman Luffoon, as well as Atlas, who she had with former boyfriend James Tupper. 

Jane, who dated in 2019 and 2020 and worked together on the HBO series Hung, told DailyMail.com: ‘While Anne and I are no longer an item, todays tragic news was devastating to me and to all who love her.

‘My heart goes out to Anne and her two sons. As of right now Anne is stable and expected to pull through. My thoughts and prayers are with Anne, one of the true talents of her generation. Thank God no one else was hurt.’

The couple dated as recently as 2020 and had even bought a house together. They had known each other for more than a decade and had co-starred as an acrimoniously divorced couple in Hung from 2009 to 2011.

Heche, a native of Aurora, Ohio, most recently starred in the action pic 13 Minutes, in which she starred alongside Thora Birch, Amy Smart and Will Peltz.

She went through a very public divorce in January 2018 from her ex-husband James Tupper. The couple were together for 10 years and share a son, Atlas, 13.

She was well known for her romance with DeGeneres in the 1990s. She brought the talk show host to the premiere of her movie Volcano in 1997. She claimed the act saw her being ‘blacklisted’ from Hollywood.

‘I didn’t do a studio picture for 10 years,’ she told Page Six. ‘I was fired from a $10 million picture deal and did not see the light of day in a studio picture.’

Following her and Ellen’s breakup, she was found incoherent and babbling in the California desert. She stumbled into a stranger’s home before being carted off to a hospital – hours after breaking up with the comedian.

‘I was told to go to a place where I would meet a spaceship. I was told in order to get on the spaceship that I would have to take a hit of ecstasy,’ Heche explained.

‘Fresno was the culmination of a journey and a world that I thought I needed to escape to in order to find love.’

Shortly after the couple dated, the director tied the knot to Coley Laffoon. They also share 20-year-old son Homer Laffoon.

Heche’s divorce from the cameraman was finalized in 2009, two years after they initially ended their romance.  The blonde later started dating Men In Trees co-star James Tupper in 2007, before they split in 2018.

Heche shares son Atlas with her ex James Tupper.

More recently, Heche had been involved with fellow actor Thomas Jane. The pair had co-starred as an acrimoniously divorced couple in the provocatively named 2009-2011 HBO series Hung. 

At the time, they were both involved with other people. She with James Tupper and he with Patricia Arquette.

Almost a decade later, the pair worked alongside each other once more as they portray a married couple in the Netflix indie thriller The Vanished.

In late 2019, the pair went public with their romance, although they are not together anymore. Heche has also previously been open about her battles with substance abuse.

‘I drank. I smoked. I did drugs. I had sex with people. I did anything I could to get the shame out of my life,’ she told ABC News in 2001.

She said her choices were because of a painful childhood in which she was sexually abused by her father, Donald Heche.

‘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.

‘I had a fantasy world that I escaped to. I called my other personality Celestia. I believed I was from that world. I believed I was from another planet. I think I was insane.’ 

‘He raped me, he stuck his d**k in my mouth, he fondled me, he put me on all fours, and had sex with me,’ Heche said of the abuse by her father. 

‘I think it’s always hard for children to talk about abuse because it is only memory. I didn’t carry around a tape recorder … I didn’t chisel anything in stone.

‘Anybody can look and say, ‘Well how do you know for sure?’ And that’s one of the most painful things about it. You don’t,’ Heche said in the 2001 interview. 

Heche also revealed that she had herpes as a young girl, but did not know if her mother knew she was being molested by her father. ‘I had a rash, I had sores, I had welts on my nose and on my lips.’ 

She said she does not describe herself as straight, gay or bisexual. ‘I would never limit myself to saying I would be with a man or a woman,’ she said.