Anne Heche was one of Hollywood’s hottest young actresses before her high-profile relationship with Ellen DeGeneres overshadowed her blossoming career, dooming her to become tabloid fodder for more than two decades.

In the mid-90s, the spiky-haired blonde — who died Friday a week after crashing her car in Los Angeles — courted critical acclaim with scene-stealing roles in indie smash “Walking and Talking” and the mobster blockbuster “Donnie Brasco” — prompting studio execs to sit up and pay attention.

By 1997, Heche — who had just turned 28 years old — was poised to become Tinseltown’s next leading lady, having inked deals to star in a rom-com opposite Harrison Ford and appear in a highly-anticipated remake of “Psycho.”

But in August of that year, the starlet went public with the much-older and much more famous DeGeneres, who had publicly come out on the cover of Time magazine just four months earlier.

The couple cozied up for the cameras at the premiere of Heche’s disaster flick “Volcano” and their same-sex romance exploded into the public eye.