CBS - 1992

Based on a true story, Jean stars as Aileen Wuornos, the United States' first convicted female serial killer. The telefilm marks Jean's first leading role in a film, and her depiction won rave reviews from the critics Nationwide.

"Jean is the best actress I've worked with in 10 years," said Director Peter Levin following the filming of Overkill. "She has tremendous emotional power. She's a dangerous actor because she's unpredictable."

Interviewed in 2000, Smart looked back on the project and Wuornos with mixed feelings. "I felt bad for the families of her victims, and for her, too -- she had absolutely no say in the film or how it was being done, and I’ve always wondered if she saw it and how she felt about it," she said. "She’s an unfortunate -- doomed from the start. She’s still on death row and if she’s ever executed, I’ll feel very conflicted about it."

Aileen Wuornos was executed October 9, 2002 in Florida.

"Jean Smart, in a radical acting departure, hurls herself into the sordid, reckless persona of the nation's first convicted female serial killer in Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story. You won't believe this is the same Smart from Designing Women. And if you happened to catch the real Aileen Wuornos on a jailhouse, TV talk-show interview last year, you know there's not an actress in Hollywood who looks damaged enough to mirror the woman who picked up white male tricks and then scattered their bullet-riddled bodies along back roads in Florida. But Smart, her bright, chic demeanor cast into a frowzy, glazed pallor and hauntingly twisted by pain and hatred, comes awfully close. Her sociopathic character is a role multilayered with lurid bravado, despair and incalculable scars from physical and sexual childhood abuse (which are sparingly dramatized in flashbacks). Playing a hitchhiking prostitute who lured seven middle-aged men to their death before investigators realized the killer was a woman, Smart is both the savage and victim, terrifying and emotionally fragile, in what is her most startling work to date." -- Ray Loynd, LA Times

"Wournos’ sullen rage is captured with jarring realism by Smart, who should be remembered when Emmy Nominations are handed out…"-- R. McCallister, Los Angeles Daily News

"Jean Smart shines in a stunning performance as Aileen Wuornos."-- Hoyt Hilsman, Daily Variety

"Ms. Smart gives a tough and steely performance..."-- John J. O'Connor, The New York Times

"...Smart deserves an Emmy."-- Joanne Ostrow, The Denver Post

"Jean Smart's stunning... She proves it tonight in a remarkable piece of work."-- Mike Hughes, Gannett News Service

"Smart is compelling in the title role."-- Jeff Jarvis, TV Guide

"Jean Smart is electrifying as the hooker who turns on her clients."-- Radio Times Filmreview