The American actress Anne Heche is worse than previously known after a serious car accident.

A spokeswoman said the 53-year-old was fighting for her life at a Los Angeles hospital after suffering severe burns and injuries to her lungs.

"Anne is in a coma and has not regained consciousness since the accident," she said on Monday.

Under still unclear circumstances, Heche drove her car into a house in the Mar Vista district on Friday morning.

The building and the car caught fire.

As TMZ reported, it took about 40 minutes for the fire brigade to free Heche from the burning vehicle.

When rescue workers tried to take the seriously injured actress to the ambulance on a stretcher, she is said to have resisted vigorously.

Collision was the third accident

As the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed, several blood samples have now been taken to examine them for alcohol and other intoxicants.

According to the investigation, Heche drove into the house at a speed of more than 80 kilometers per hour.

Previously, she is said to have caused at least two other accidents.

In the first accident, she crashed into the garage of an apartment building.

When passers-by tried to get Heche out of the car, she is said to have fled the scene of the accident at excessive speed.

Previously, she had allegedly nearly hit a pedestrian.

After her first role in the soap opera "Another World", Anne Heche became known in the late 1990s for films such as "I Know What You Did Last Summer" or "Six Days, Seven Nights".

Her personal life, which she shared with presenter and comedian Ellen DeGeneres, also made headlines at the time.

A year after their separation in the summer of 2000, Heche walked down the aisle with cameraman Coleman Laffoon.

A year later, Heche gave birth to their son Homer.

The split followed when the actress fell in love with Canadian James Tupper, her co-star on Men in Trees, in 2007.

Two years later she became a mother again.

Heche's now 13-year-old son Atlas has mostly lived with his father since their separation from Tupper in 2018.

The actress, whose brother Nathan was killed in a car in 1983, has been considered mentally ill since the summer of 2000 at the latest.

At that time she drove more than 300 kilometers from Los Angeles to Fresno, parked her car on the side of the road and walked a few kilometers through the desert in a brassiere and shorts.

Finally, at a remote house, she knocked on the door, demanded water, a shower, and wanted to see a movie.

When the resident called the sheriff, Heche let the officers know she was God and wanted to take her to heaven in the spaceship.

She was then taken to the psychiatric unit at the University Medical Center in Fresno.