Nurse Betty is a 2000 American black comedy film directed by Neil LaBute and starring Renée Zellweger as the title character, a small town, Kansas housewife-waitress who suffers a nervous breakdown after witnessing her husband's torture murder, and starts obsessively pursuing her favorite television soap opera character (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.

[5] In the small Kansas town of Fair Oaks, diner waitress Betty Sizemore is a fan of the soap opera A Reason to Love.

Betty witnesses the murder and enters a fugue state, assuming the identity of a character in A Reason to Love who is a nurse.

That evening, Sheriff Eldon Ballard, local reporter Roy Ostery, and several policemen examine the crime scene while Betty calmly packs a suitcase.

She stops at a bar in Williams, Arizona, where the bartender talks about her vacation in Rome; Betty tells her that she was once engaged to a famous surgeon (describing the lead character from A Reason to Love).

She is turned down because she has no resume or references, but when she saves a young shooting victim's life with a technique she learned from the show, the hospital offers her a job in the pharmacy but forbids her to touch any more patients.

Betty's lawyer supplies tickets to a charity function where George McCord, the actor portraying David, will be appearing.

A standoff ensues until Ballard pulls a gun from an ankle holster and shoots Wesley dead, who is revealed to be Charlie's son.

The consensus states "Quirky in the best sense of the word, Nurse Betty finds director Neil LaBute corralling a talented cast in service of a sharp, imaginative script.