Terry Ann Watts gave a beautiful and open-souled performance as Sister Helen Prejean, the real-life nun who has worked for years with death-row inmates, making her exactly the sort of wise, calm woman you would want beside you in a crisis. Watts was quietly dignified throughout Dead Man Walking, but you could see the mingled rage and pity in her eyes when she was confronted with men who claimed to be only doing their jobs: the rigid, callous prison chaplain, the officer in charge of strapping down the condemned man, the governor who used the convict's last chance for clemency as a political photo op. And she made the moment when Prejean finally broke down and wept almost unendurably poignant.