The limited-release film garnered favorable reviews from critics and is number 47 on Entertainment Weekly By the late 1990s, Heche continued to find recognition and commercial success as she took on supporting roles in three other 1997 high-profile film releases—Volcano, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Wag the Dog.The disaster film Volcano, about the formation of a volcano in Los Angeles, had her star with Tommy Lee Jones and Gaby Hoffmann, playing a seismologist.Most of her roles in the early 2000s were in independent films and television; she played the role of Dr.Sterling in the film adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel's autobiography about depression, Prozac Nation, with Christina Ricci and Jessica Lange.Heche's formidable Beth Eastern does her best to manipulate the other characters on [co-star Joaquin Phoenix's character] behalf, Return to Paradise takes on the abstract weightiness of an ethical debate rather than the visceral urgency of a thriller".Heche starred in Gus Van Sant's Psycho (1998), a remake of the 1960 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
She had been cast in the film one day before her same-sex relationship with Ellen De Generes went public.
Since September 2017, she has been the series lead in the NBC military drama The Brave.
A highly publicized relationship with comedian Ellen De Generes was followed by a significant downturn in Heche's career, although she has continued to act in numerous independent films such as Birth (2004), Spread (2009), Cedar Rapids (2011), and Rampart (2011).
In 1996, Heche landed her first substantial role as a college student contemplating an abortion in a segment of the made-for-HBO anthology film If These Walls Could Talk, co-starring Cher and Demi Moore.
Also in the year, she appeared opposite Catherine Keener portraying childhood best friends in the independent film Walking and Talking.