in The Kennedys of Massachusetts, a role that earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress. She next starred in the 1992 NBC mini-series Jewels, based on the Danielle Steel novel of the same name. In 1993, O'Toole starred in Desperate Justice as Ellen Wells. In 1995, she starred as Cheryl Keeton in the 1995 Lifetime television film based on Ann Rule's true crime novel Dead by Sunset. She had a recurring role on the television show Nash Bridges (1996) and starred in her own series The Huntress (2000) as a female bounty hunter. In 1997 O'Toole starred in the TV movie Keeping the Promise. In October 2001, 18 years after portraying Lana Lang in Superman III, O'Toole returned to the Superman mythos in the role of Martha Kent, Superman's adoptive mother, in the television series Smallville. She remained part of the show's main cast, though at times in the background, until the end of its sixth season. On January 19, 2010, it was announced that O'Toole would be returning to Smallville for at least one episode. 2010s On November 22, 2010, O'Toole played the role of Veronica, a middle-aged woman with a severe case of Alzheimer's, in season 3 episode 7 of the TV series Lie to Me. In March 2013 she appeared in Grey's Anatomy as a school teacher who finds out, after surgery, that she will die from cancer. O'Toole portrayed Susan Emerson in six episodes of the first two seasons of Halt and Catch Fire. In 2016, O'Toole returned to the Stephen King realm as boarding house owner Edna Price in 'The Kill Floor' episode of the King mini-series 11.22.63. O'Toole filled the role of Hope McCrea in the Netflix series Virgin River. Musical career O'Toole can date the beginning of her songwriting career to events during a car ride after the September 11 attacks; as her husband Michael McKean describes it, "On September 11, 2001, Annette found herself without an airline to carry her back down to Los Angeles from Vancouver, where she films Smallville. So she drove a rental car down. The two of us drove it back up together, and on the long drive up there, somewhere between Portland and Seattle, she told me she had a tune in her head." The "tune in her head" became "Potato's in the Paddy Wagon", one of three songs the couple wrote for A Mighty