woman who has an affair with her husband's lawyer. Her husband, an abusive bigot (played by Dennis Hopper), is on trial for murdering a young African American girl. The film, which was based on Pete Dexter's 1988 National Book Award-winning novel, featured Hopper and Hershey enacting a graphic rape scene that the actress found difficult to view. The picture was described as a "dramatic reach deep into the dark hollows of racism, abuse and murder." Paris Trout was nominated for five Prime Time Emmy Awards, including nods for both Hershey and Hopper. Later in the year, Hershey played an attorney defending her college roommate for the murder of her husband in the suspenseful whodunit Defenseless (1991). Because of her frequent television appearances, by the end of 1991, Hershey was accused of "selling out to the small screen". In 1992, Hershey appeared with Jane Alexander in the ABC miniseries Stay the Night (1992), prompting Associated Press writer Jerry Buck to write, "Barbara Hershey is a person who jumps back and forth between features and television very easily." She starred in another TV miniseries in 1993, succeeding Anjelica Huston as Clara Allen in the sequel series Return to Lonesome Dove. She was nominated for a Golden Satellite Award for another TV appearance, The Staircase (1998). Between 1999 and 2000, she played Dr. Francesca Alberghetti in 22 season-six episodes of the medical TV drama Chicago Hope. Hershey co-starred with Joe Pesci as a nightclub owner in the film drama The Public Eye (1992) and as the abused estranged wife of a homicidal Michael Douglas in the thriller Falling Down (1993). Among the other feature films in which she appeared during the 1990s was Jane Campion's adaptation of the Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady (1996). Hershey earned an Oscar nomination and won the Best Supporting Actress award from the National Society of Film Critics for her role as Madame Serena Merle in that picture. In 1995, Last of the Dogmen, co-starring Tom Berenger, was released through Savoy Pictures. In 1999, Hershey starred in an independent film called Drowning on Dry Land; during production she met co-star Naveen Andrews, with whom she began a romantic relationship that lasted until 2010. 2000s In 2001, Hershey appeared in the psychological thriller Lantana. She was the only American in a mostly Australian cast, which included Kerry Armstrong, Anthony LaPaglia, and Geoffrey Rush. Film writer Sheila