HOME   ABOUT THE AUTHOR My personal "who, what, where, when, why, and how"   NOW PLAYING A selection of contemporary clips   THE NOSTALGIA FILE Links to more senior stories still available on the Web for browsing   "BETWEEN PRODUCTIONS" Blogging about entertainment   RESUME   CONTACT ME

: NOW PLAYING :: IN NEW YORK :: Back on track Her tumultuous tabloid past behind her, Anne Heche shares her favorite Manhattan moments as she and Alec Baldwin board the Twentieth Century. You can’t call Anne Heche crazy anymore. Well, maybe just a little. She’s crazy in love, you see. But this time, the object of her affection is neither a he nor a she, but a city—the one that’s again welcoming her with open arms to perform upon one of its great stages: New York. She’s had flings with Gotham before, of course. At the tender age of 18, Heche, just coming into her own as a performer, began doing double duty as twins on the soap opera, Another World, a sister act that won her a Daytime Emmy in 1991. The relationship, she laughs, went largely unconsummated. “I lived on W. 89th Street for four years and never had time to go to the American Museum of Natural History, but that’s a soap schedule for you.” The seven months Heche spent here in 2002 were more fruitful: Her husband and new baby boy in tow, she made a widely acclaimed Broadway debut as a mathematician’s troubled daughter, trying to add up the pieces of her life, in Proof. “There was a very beautiful, post-9/11 energy here—a connectedness, a peacefulness to everybody, a calm that I had never experienced before. It was my chance to support New York at that time, as part of a new little family just trying to get through eight shows a week.” Between these periods of artistic awakening and rebirth in Manhattan, Heche got through much more than that. Like the “brilliant/crazy” character she played in Proof, she was indeed in another world, a mad tear through the gossipy pages of the tabloids. She had a famous boyfriend (Steve Martin) and then, to universal shock, a famous girlfriend, comedienne Ellen DeGeneres. Their taboo-busting relationship tumbled out of the closet in 1997 and generated headlines aplenty till it ended in 2000. The aftermath was worse: In a well-publicized incident Heche, confused and disoriented over the breakup, turned up at a stranger’s home near Fresno, CA, and asked to use the shower. Her notoriety threatened a promising career in movies, including Donnie Brasco and Wag the Dog. “The most eventful private life in show business at the turn of the century,” wrote critic David Thomson in his New Biographical Dictionary of Film. “No one else delivers what Anne Heche brings to the screen [but] she has had far too much public disorder.” Away from the spotlights she wrote, in six blistering weeks, an autobiography, Call Me Crazy. She detailed a lifetime of mental instability and surprised an incredulous Barbara Walters when she unveiled her alien alter ego, “Celestia,” on 20/20. Then, she turned a new page, marrying cameraman Coley Laffoon in 2001 and having their son, Homer, in 2002. Broadway beckoned later that year. Reinvigorated by the experience, she looked for a return vehicle and has booked deluxe accommodations on Twentieth Century, a screwball comedy that takes off this month. A blitzkrieg of banter from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Twentieth Century “mirrors where I am right now, in a fun, fabulous way,” Heche says. The scribes, who had previously concocted the classic newspaper farce The Front Page, here take aim at the foibles of show people. Heche plays famed movie star Lily Garland, the protégé of eccentric Broadway producer Oscar Jaffe (played by Alec Baldwin), who put the former Mildred Plotka onstage. His career in crisis since Lily/Mildred went west, he schemes to steal her back, heart and soul, by pursuing her aboard the luxury train of the title as it makes its Chicago-to-Grand Central run. The play, revived only once (in 1950) since its 1932 premiere, was the basis of the 1978 musical On the Twentieth Century but is best remembered from Howard Hawks’ crackerjack 1934 film version, starring Carole Lombard and John Barrymore. The show has been freshly adapted by playwright Ken Ludwig (Crazy for You) and is directed by Walter Bobbie, a Tony winner for the powerhouse revival of Chicago. For Heche, who knows a thing or two about the price of fame (and NY vs. LA living), “the comedy is the broad stroke this time and the more difficult emotional experience is in the lower notes. After Proof, I’m looking forward to that flip a lot.” And she’s especially looking forward to a reunion with Baldwin, who, you may recall, seduced, then killed her, in the 1996 film The Juror. Despite those dire circumstances, “he had me cracking up the entire time. He surprised me backstage at Proof one night and the idea of us working together again just ignited.” Proof opened a new chapter in her career, one that Twentieth Century continues now that those alien voices have quieted down. “Broadway threw its arms around me and now I’m coming home,” she says. “I mean, me, who previously had acted onstage only in dinner theater and 50-seat houses. I had just had Homer, and there I was, with milky boobs and chunky baby weight, playing a 25-year-old. It was an incredible challenge and I’ve become an addict to the experience, as everyone predicted I would.” When her busy schedule allows, the attractions of New York are equally beguiling. She made a film here in 1996 called Walking and Talking and that’s what she and her husband most like to do in the city. “On a single walk you can see more and experience more in New York than you can see or experience in LA in a month,” she says. By day, she enjoys taking in the sights of Central Park, particularly Belvedere Castle, Wollman Rink, and the elm-lined Mall. “When I first lived here, I took it for granted. When I came back, I said, I can’t believe this exists. For Proof we were put up in the Ritz Carlton and there it was, Central Park as our backyard. Baby Homer must’ve thought he’d stepped into Alice in Wonderland.” By night, she puts Homer on a “Broadway baby schedule” and she and her family take in the brightly decorated store windows along Fifth Avenue. “Listen, I’m always going to be a girl who enjoys walking over to Bergdorf Goodman to see what’s on sale,” she laughs. “Of course, it’s funny taking the baby with us. I get home from the theater for his last feeding and out we go—people look at us and wonder, what are they doing up with a child past 11 p.m.?” On Monday, her night off, she and her husband head to hot new restaurants; sushi is very much her favorite. Not long ago, the notion of a happily married Anne Heche traipsing around New York, in search of the best eel rolls with a baby on board, would have been unthinkable. But Heche, whose talent has always been guided by her instincts, specializes in idiosyncrasies. This Manhattan phase coincides with her 35th birthday in May, a milestone that finds her free and clear of personal demons. “I thank God I had gotten healthy by the time I was 32, and that along the way I had so many incredible opportunities to try everything I possibly could to get my creative soul on Earth,” she says, in her sincere, slightly spacey way. “If my career, and my choices, has brought me to Broadway at this time to do Twentieth Century, I am so grateful.”