Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio, the daughter of Nancy and Donald Heche. Her father was an organist, church founder, Baptist minister, and choir director. In her book, Call Me Crazy, she claimed that her father molested her during her childhood, giving her herpes. Her father later disclosed his homosexuality to his family, before dying of AIDS in 1983. In that same year, Heche's older brother Nate, who was also an actor, was killed in a car accident just a few months before his graduation from high school. Heche was a noted actress even at Francis W. Parker School, in Chicago, and the soap opera As the World Turns offered her a contract in 1985, when she was 16. However, both she and her mother felt it best that she finish high school first.