The End of Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche

Aug. 22 -- Straight or gay, Hollywood love affairs so often crash and burn.

Perhaps life in the spotlight is not really more tragic, only more public.

Just a few months ago, Heche, 31, and Ellen DeGeneres, 42, were singing each other’s praises at the premiere of HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk II. Like any show business power couple, they held hands and joint interviews, finishing each other’s sentences, trying to express the same thought.

Reporters asked what would the walls say if the walls of their $3.5 million L.A. pad could talk, more than three years after going very public?

“They’d be saying that we are very excited and we’re very happy and in love three years later,” DeGeneres said.

“Yeah,” Heche agreed. “We’re very lucky women, that we get to have what we have.”

“It’s a celebration every single day,” DeGeneres continued. “It’s kind of disgusting and crazy that we’re like … Oh, we’re so lucky.”

“Yeah,” Heche butted in. “We’re lucky, we’re so lucky.”

Now Begins the Aftermath

The HBO movie was, at least in part, a bit of wish fulfillment. Heche directed DeGeneres and Sharon Stone in a segment about a lesbian couple trying to have a baby. In the months leading up to that interview, they spoke openly about wanting to have kids. Heche even told TV Guide that she hoped to be the one to carry the child.

And DeGeneres proclaimed her love for Heche, reflecting on the death of Princess Diana and the frailty of life. “If Anne goes, I want to go,” she said. “That’s how strongly I feel.”

Yet just 3 1/2 years after Heche announced her love for DeGeneres on Oprah, it all came apart, like so many other show business love affairs. On Saturday came a report in the New York Daily News of their relationship ending, and only hours later, a shaken and incoherent Heche parked her SUV along a central California highway and wandered up to a stranger’s home.