Park Overall (born March 15, 1957) is an American actress, environmental and women's rights activist, and former U.S. Senate candidate, known for her trademark heavy Southern accent. Her best-known role was as nurse Laverne Todd in the sitcom Empty Nest, though she has appeared in a number of feature films, including Biloxi Blues, Mississippi Burning, Talk Radio, and In the Family. Early life and acting career Overall was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised in Greeneville, Tennessee. She is the daughter of Thomas Wesley "Jack" Overall, Jr., a federal magistrate judge and Frances (née Bernard), a professor of English. She has described her parents as Yellow Dog Democrats. As a teenager, she worked on the political campaigns of Tom Wiseman and Jim Sasser. Overall graduated from Tusculum University with a degree in English, and briefly attended graduate school at the University of Tennessee. In her late 20s, she moved to New York to pursue an acting career. One of her first roles was in Skin, an off-off-Broadway play about Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick. She also appeared in both the stage and film versions of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues, and had a role in a failed pilot called The Line (which aired once in the summer of 1987) with Dinah Manoff, with whom she eventually costarred on the NBC series Empty Nest. Empty Nest, which aired from 1988 to 1995, provided Overall's breakthrough role. She played Laverne Higby Todd Kane, nurse to Harry Weston, played by Richard Mulligan. She played the same role in the early episodes of the Empty Nest spinoff, Nurses, in the early 1990s. She later starred in the short-lived TV series Katie Joplin and Ladies Man, both from 1999. In 1995, she was the voice of Alice Tompkins in the animated series The Critic. She has appeared in several TV movies, including the Lifetime drama Fifteen and Pregnant (1998). She has made guest appearances on TV shows such as The Golden Girls, The Young Riders, and Reba, in which she had a recurring role during the series' first season. Her first feature role was in Tainted (1987); she appeared in four additional films the same year: Biloxi Blues, Vibes, Mississippi Burning, and Talk Radio. Her role on Talk Radio was voice only. Her most recent appearances were in To Kill a Mockumentary (2006), the Toby Keith film Beer for My Horses (2008), and the Patrick Wang