Anne Heche died without a will as 20-year-old son files to control estate

The son of actor Anne Heche has filed court papers to take control of her estate after she died without a will.

Heche, an Emmy-winning US film and television actress, died of injuries from a car crash last month, aged 53.

The actress had been taken off life support at a Los Angeles burns centre after suffering a "severe anoxic brain injury" caused by a lack of oxygen when her car crashed into a home on August 5.

Homer Laffoon, Heche’s son with ex-husband Coleman Laffoon, filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday requesting that he be allowed to administer his mother’s estate.

The petition lists Homer Laffoon and 13-year-old Atlas Tupper - Heche’s son with former partner James Tupper - as her only heirs.

The document says the value of Heche’s estate is unknown. That is often the case on such initial filings, before anyone has the legal authority to assess the dead person’s assets.

Homer Laffoon also filed a petition asking that someone be appointed to represent his brother’s interests in court.

Heche first came to prominence on the NBC soap opera Another World from 1987 to 1991, winning a Daytime Emmy Award for the role of twins Marley and Vicky Hudson.

By the late 1990s, Heche was one of the hottest stars in Hollywood, a constant on magazine covers and in big-budget films. In 1997 alone, she played opposite Johnny Depp as his wife in Donnie Brasco and opposite Tommy Lee Jones in Volcano and was part of the ensemble cast in the original I Know What You Did Last Summer.

The following year, she starred in Six Days, Seven Nights and appeared with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix in Return to Paradise. She also played one of cinema’s most famous murder victims, Marion Crane of Psycho, in Gus Van Sant’s remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic.

Heche worked consistently in smaller films, on Broadway and on TV shows in the past two decades. She recently had recurring roles on the network series Chicago PD and in 2020 was a contestant on Dancing With the Stars.