Jennifer Jason Leigh becomes a junkie and falls in love with her partner, played by Jason Patric. Her next film, "Single White Female" (1992), was a surprise box-office success, bringing Leigh to her largest mainstream audience yet, portraying a mentally ill woman who terrorizes roommate Bridget Fonda. Leigh was awarded the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain and nominated for Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress. Leigh co-starred with Kathy Bates as a tormented, pill-popping woman hiding a history of childhood sexual abuse in the adaptation of Stephen King's novel "Dolores Claiborne" (1995). Leigh achieved her greatest acclaim in the role
Jennifer Jason Leigh Brothers' comic homage to 1950s comedy, "The Hudsucker Proxy" (1994). Leigh took her first lead role as the writer and critic Dorothy Parker in Alan Rudolph's film "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" (1994). She received a Golden Globe Award nomination and a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress, as well as Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and Fort Lauderdale Film Critics Best Actress Award. In another change of pace, she starred in Agnieszka Holland's version of the Henry James novel "Washington Square" (1997), as a mousy 19th-century heiress courted by a gold digger.