Barbara Walters Gets Inside Heche's Head

September 4, 2001 -- (ABCNEWS.com) — Anne Heche says the sexual molestation she suffered at the hands of her father caused her to escape into a "fourth dimension" fantasy world in which she believed she was from another planet.

"I'm not crazy," Heche tells 20/20 on Wednesday in an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters. "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."

In the wide-ranging interview, Heche, 32, talks about her childhood, her career, her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres — she says her first night with the comedian was "the best sex I'd ever had" — and new love Coleman "Coley" Laffoon, a 27-year-old cameraman whom she married on Saturday.

Heche, promoting her new book, Call Me Crazy, says she's had a lifelong battle with mental illness. "I had a fantasy world that I escaped to. I called my other personality Celestia," she explains. "I believed I was from that world. I believed I was from another planet. I think I was insane."

Heche traces much of her psychological trauma to sexual abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her father, Donald, a choir director in a Baptist church. She reveals that upon learning of her father's history of homosexual encounters, shortly prior to his AIDS-related death in 1983, she feared for her life.

Her traumatic childhood was a factor in her decision to date comedian Steve Martin, 24 years her senior. "I wanted the love of an older man. I wanted comfort. I wanted humor. I wanted all of the things that he offered," she says. "Why did we break up? There's wasn't anything wrong with Steve. It was just that it was not what I wanted to commit my life to."

Neither, it turns out, was her relationship with DeGeneres, though she vividly recalls their initial encounter, on Oscar night in 1997: "I saw the most ravishing woman I had ever seen in my life standing across the room. Her name was Ellen DeGeneres. She was radiating. I think at certain times in people's lives you just radiate an energy and a glow of fabulousness. And that was her. I had never seen anybody so lit up."

Heche says she does not label herself straight, gay or bisexual — and that new husband Laffoon understands her. "He's an extraordinary guy," says Heche. "He's one of the few people I've ever met who actually embraces the same notion about sexuality that I do … which is that you love who you love. You fall in love with a person, not a sex."