- A Hollywood writer becomes embroiled while investigating into the lives of five fictitious actresses all nominated for the Academy Award for best actress.
- Ted, a recently murdered writer for a Hollywood tabloid magazine, narrates his story about the five sordid and scandalous lives of five actresses nominated for the Academy Award for best actress who include British star Fiona Covington; teenage drug addict Amber Lyons; alcoholic, self-hating lesbian Lori Seefer; blond vixen and center-fold Karen Kroll; and washed-up singer Connie Travis, and out of all of these individuals, one of them vows to kill the one who wins the award if she doesn't.—matt-282
- "Best Actress", E! Entertainment Television's first original movie for television, stars Thomas Calabro ("Melrose Place"), Loretta Devine ("Waiting To Exhale", "The Dorothy Dandridge Story") Maria Conchita Alonso ("Caught"), Jamie Pressly ("Jack and Jill", "Can't Hardly Wait") and Rachel Hunter ("A Little Harmless Sex"). The movie, based on the novel by John Kane, is a wry comedy about the race for the Best Actress Oscar® and one actress in particular who would literally kill to win the award. The two-hour movie also features cameo appearances from Hollywood celebrities and power players. Anthony S. Head ("Buffy The Vampire Slayer"), Jordan Ladd ("Never Been Kissed") and Elisa Donovan ("Clueless", "A Night At The Roxbury") also star in the tongue-in-cheek look at he behind the scenes machinations preceding filmdom's most celebrated kudocast.
The story revolves around the interweaving plot-lines of five characters that are the Academy Award® nominees for Best Actress. Fiona Covington (Hunter) is a prim and proper English rose, who finds herself on the brink of divorce when fellow nominee Karen Kroll (Pressly), a softcore porn star turned "Serious Actress", publicly poaches Fiona's actor-director husband, Colin (Head).
Hollywood starlet Amber Lyons (Ladd) is on the fast track until she takes a detour into a renowned rehab center, where she finds herself bunking with fellow nominee Connie Travers (Devine), a super-diva singer-actress whose career comeback hinges on the award.
Closeted lesbian Lori Seefer (Donovan) fears that her nomination will force her our and is willing to pay any price - even the loss of her lover, Maria (Alonso), to avoid it.
Calabro plays narrator Ted Gavin, the fan magazine writer and wannabe "player", who becomes perilously entangled with the five contenders while penning a story about the awards race. As each actress attempts to weather the personal and public relations crises that the award nomination brings to their doorsteps, the situation becomes increasingly tense. Someone is bound to snap - and on the big night it's just a question of who will wield her pearl-handled revolver when someone else claims the Best Actress statue.
While reporting and investigating Karen's background, Ted tries one night to blackmail her by revealing her sordid past in exchange for giving him an exclusive story. When she agrees, Ted lets his guard down and she immediately pushes him off a cliff to his death. Ted then pops up as a ghost for the viewers to explain his current status.
After moving out of Lori's house, Maria meets and hooks up with Fiona who is confused by her attraction to another woman. But later, Fiona leaves her to go back to her husband, Colin.
After leaving rehab, Connie meets and hooks up with the cop Eric Collins who arrested her for a DUI and encourages her to turn her life around.
When Lori makes a suicide attempt, Ted actually appears in front of her to try to persuade her not to go through with it. Maria finds Lori and manages to phone for paramedics and saves her life. Following her bush with death, Lori fires her publicist for forcing her to try to hide her homosexuality and comes out during a TV interview and accepts Maria back in her life.
At the climax, all five of the actresses attend the Academy Awards celebration, where one of them has a small pistol hidden in her purse and vows to kill the one who receives the award.... and all five of them, Lori, Connie, Amber, Fiona, and Karen have the exact same purse. The Oscar award is given to Karen and when she steps on stage to accept and gives her acceptance speech, she is quickly shot and killed by.... Amber who is quickly subdued and arrested.
In the final scene, Karen's spirit leaves her body and joins Ted who tells her that he will now leave this plane of existence for the afterlife while she will remain on Earth in his place to view her life over and over as punishment for her sinful life while Karen continues to protest to Ted that she won the Academy Award for Best Actress and does not deserve this Purgatory fate, while he smiles and walks away from her.
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