Anne Celeste Heche

Anne Celeste Heche overcame an impoverished and traumatic childhood to win a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991 for her dual role as twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on the soap opera Another World. She broke into major film stardom in the late 1990s with a streak of high-profile films including Donnie Brasco (opposite Johnny Depp), Volcano (opposite Tommy Lee Jones), the slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer, and political satire Wag the Dog.

In 1997, at the peak of her studio career, Heche publicly stepped out as Ellen DeGeneres's partner, walking the red carpet at the Volcano premiere together. Despite immediate studio backlash and lost multi-picture contracts during a homophobic era in Hollywood, she remained defiant and paved the way for queer visibility. She starred in Six Days Seven Nights (1998) with Harrison Ford and Gus Van Sant's Psycho, and earned Tony and Emmy nominations for her stage and television work.