Erin Brockovich is a 2000 American biographical legal drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Susannah Grant. The film is a dramatization of the true story of Erin Brockovich, portrayed by Julia Roberts, who fought against the energy corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) regarding its culpability for the Hinkley groundwater contamination incident. The film was a box-office success, and gained a positive critical reaction. The film received five nominations at the 73rd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Soderbergh, Best Original Screenplay for Grant, Best Actress for Roberts (which she won), and Best Supporting Actor for Finney. Roberts also won a BAFTA award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and multiple critics awards. Soderbergh received a separate Best Director nomination for Traffic, another film released that same year, which he won. Early in the film, the real Erin Brockovich has a cameo appearance as a waitress named Julia; the real Ed Masry also appears in the same scene. Plot In 1993, Erin Brockovich is an unemployed single mother of three children who has recently been injured in a traffic accident with a doctor and is suing him. Her lawyer, Ed Masry, expects to win, but Erin's confrontational courtroom behavior under cross-examination loses her the case, and Ed will not return her phone calls afterwards. One day, he arrives at work to find her in the office, apparently working. She says that he told her things would work out and they did not, and that she needed a job. She asks Ed for a job, which he reluctantly gives her. Erin is given files for a real estate case where the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is offering to purchase the home of Donna Jensen, a resident of Hinkley, California. Erin is surprised to see medical records in a real estate file and visits Donna, who explains that she had simply kept all her PG&E correspondence together. Donna appreciates PG&E's help: she has had several tumors and her husband has Hodgkin's lymphoma, but PG&E has always provided a doctor at their own expense. Erin asks why they would do that, and Donna replies, "because of the chromium". Erin begins digging into the case and finds evidence that the groundwater in Hinkley is seriously contaminated with carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, while PG&E has been telling Hinkley residents that they use a safer form of