Nurse Betty
| Nurse Betty | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Neil LaBute |
| Produced by |
Steve Golin Gail Mutrux |
| Written by | John C. Richards James Flamberg |
| Starring |
Morgan Freeman Renée Zellweger Chris Rock Greg Kinnear |
| Music by | Rolfe Kent |
| Cinematography | Jean-Yves Escoffier |
| Edited by | Joel Plotch Steven Weisberg |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | USA Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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105 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $35 million |
| Box office | $29,360,400 |
Nurse Betty is a 2000 American black comedy film directed by Neil LaBute starring Renée Zellweger as a Kansas waitress who suffers a nervous breakdown after witnessing her husband's murder, and starts obsessively pursuing her favorite soap actor (played by Greg Kinnear), while in a fugue state. Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock play the hitmen who killed her husband and subsequently pursue her to Los Angeles.
For her performance, Zellweger won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
In a small Kansas town, Betty (Renée Zellweger), a kind and considerate diner waitress, is a fan of the soap opera A Reason to Love. She has no idea that her husband, Del (Aaron Eckhart), a car salesman, is having an affair with his secretary and that he intends to leave Betty to pursue a relationship with her. She also doesn't know that her husband supplements his income by selling drugs out of the car dealership. When Betty calls to leave a message about borrowing a Buick LeSabre for her birthday, her husband tells her to take a different car, as the LeSabre (unknown to Betty) has stolen drugs hidden in the trunk.
Two hitmen, Charlie and Wesley (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock), show up at the house with Betty's husband. The hitmen torture Betty's husband into revealing that he has hidden the drugs in the trunk of a car, but Wesley scalps him anyway. Betty witnesses the murder and experiences a fugue state, escaping the reality of murder into the comforting fantasy of the soap opera. In her mind, she assumes the identity of one of the characters in the daytime drama, a nurse.
That evening, Sheriff Eldon Ballard (Pruitt Taylor Vince), local reporter Roy Ostery (Crispin Glover), and several policemen examine the crime scene while Betty calmly packs a suitcase. She seems oblivious to the murder, even with the investigation going on right in her house. At the police station, a psychiatrist examines her. Betty spends the night at her friend's house, sleeping in a child's bedroom with the innocence of a little girl. In the middle of the night, she gets into her car and drives off. Betty's next stop is a bar in Arizona, where the lady bartender talks about her inspiring vacation in Rome, and Betty tells her that she was once engaged to a famous surgeon (describing the lead character from A Reason to Love – not the actor who portrays him).
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