Dead Man Walking (1996)

Susan Sarandon earned a Best Actress Oscar for her role in the powerful, anti-death-penalty drama Dead Man Walking (1996), based on the real-life experiences of activist Sister Helen Prejean. Sarandon stars as Prejean, a nun who’s enlisted to provide spiritual counsel to Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), a convicted murderer counting down the hours on death row. As Prejean struggles to understand the events that led to the tragic killing, she experiences a growing sense of empathy for the killer, his victims, and their families. A powerful, stirring inquiry into the troubling aspects of legal execution, Tim Robbins’s critically acclaimed film does manage to boast a brief flash of skin. Despite the incredible ease of the assignment, for some reason Missy Yager enlists a body double to play her corpse.