Actress Anne Heche has been left in a coma and is not expected to survive injuries she sustained in a car crash last week, according to a statement her publicist released on Thursday evening on behalf of family and friends. .
Ms Heche, 53, was seriously injured on August 5 when the Mini Cooper she was traveling in crashed into a house in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, authorities said. She suffered a severe anoxic brain injury and was being treated at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital, according to the family statement.
“It has long been her choice to donate her organs and she is being kept on life support to determine if any are viable,” the statement read.
The crash ignited a fire that took 59 firefighters more than an hour to extinguish, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Ms. Heche was the only person in the car, authorities said.
On Monday, another representative, Michael A. McConnell, told Reuters that Ms Heche had not regained consciousness since shortly after the accident.
In 1991, Ms. Heche won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series, for playing good and bad twins on the NBC soap opera “Another World.”
She starred in several popular Hollywood films in the late 1990s, including “Donnie Brasco”, “Wag the Dog” and “Six Days Seven Nights”. She continued to have television roles, including 2006’s ‘Men in Trees’ and 2009’s ‘Hung’, and performed on Broadway, with 2002’s ‘Proof’ and 2004’s ‘Twentieth Century’.
Mike Ives contributed reporting from Seoul.
