It stars Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix and Matt Dillon, with Illeana Douglas, Wayne Knight, Casey Affleck, Kurtwood Smith, Dan Hedaya, and Alison Folland in supporting roles.

[7] To Die For was written by Buck Henry based on Joyce Maynard's novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the story of Pamela Smart, a woman who was convicted in 1991 for being an accomplice in a plot to murder her husband.

In the fictional town of Little Hope, New Hampshire, Suzanne Stone is a glamorous and ambitious young woman who has always been obsessed with being on television and aspires to become a world-famous broadcast journalist.

She uses his family's restaurant business to keep herself financially stable and takes a job as an assistant at WWEN, a local cable station, in hopes of climbing the network ladder.

Though Larry's death is ruled the result of a botched burglary, police stumble across a Teens Speak Out clip of Suzanne at their school, which points to her sexual involvement with Jimmy.

Maynard loosely based the novel on the facts that emerged during the trial of Pamela Smart, a school media services coordinator who was imprisoned for seducing a 16-year-old student and convincing him to kill her husband.

Van Sant enlisted cinematographer Eric Alan Edwards and editor Curtiss Clayton, his previous collaborators on Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

[11][8] Nicole Kidman, who had been wanting to return to more auteur-driven projects after working in big-budget films like Days of Thunder and Far and Away, lobbied Van Sant for the role and convinced him she was right for the character.

[8] A number of actresses including Sandra Bullock, Janeane Garofalo, Jennifer Tilly, and DeGeneres read for the role of Janice Maretto before Illeana Douglas was cast.

The film holds an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 61 reviews, where the consensus reads "Smart, funny, and thoroughly well-cast, To Die For takes a sharp – and sadly prescient – stab at dissecting America's obsession with celebrity.

"[18] In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "an irresistible black comedy and a wicked delight" and added, "[it] takes aim at tabloid ethics and hits a solid bull's-eye, with Ms. Kidman's teasingly beautiful Suzanne as the most alluring of media-mad monsters.

The target is broad, but Gus Van Sant's film is too expertly sharp and funny for that to matter; instead, it shows off this director's slyness better than any of his work since Drugstore Cowboy ...

"[19] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, in a review that awarded the film 3 and ½ out of 4 stars, wrote: "'To Die For' is the kind of movie that's merciless with its characters, and Kidman is superb at making Suzanne into someone who is not only stupid, vain and egomaniacal (we've seen that before) but also vulnerably human.

The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan wrote that Van Sant adds his "trademark absurdist sensibility to the mix as well as an empathy for inarticulate, inchoate teen-agers that turns out to give this film a good deal of its impact".

[22] Turan concluded: "The most accurate assault against the media age since 'Network,' 'To Die For's killer lines and wicked sensibility are given added poignancy by the off-center, sensitive performance of Joaquin Phoenix, River's younger brother, the only person more deluded about Suzanne than she is about herself.

"[23] Katherine Ramsland of Crime Library discussed the film as an example of a work displaying women with antisocial personalities, with Suzanne in particular described as a "manipulator extraordinaire" who harms people through third parties.

[25] Writing in 2007, Emanuel Levy stated, "mean-spirited satire, told in mock-tabloid style, this film features the best performance of Nicole Kidman to date (better than The Hours for which she won an Oscar), as an amoral small-town girl obsessed with becoming a TV star.