Cynthia Nixon wears an unidentified watch

Cynthia Nixon plays Alice Stark in The Pelican Brief, a friend of Julia Roberts's Darby Shaw who gets pulled into danger when Darby reaches out to her while on the run from assassins. Alan J. Pakula directed this 1993 thriller based on John Grisham's novel about a law student whose theory about two Supreme Court murders turns out to be correct. Nixon's role is small but memorable: Alice is one of the few people Darby can contact, and their scenes together carry the weight of a friendship under impossible strain. This was years before Nixon became famous as Miranda on Sex and the City, and The Pelican Brief finds her in the kind of supporting work that filled her resume in the early 1990s. Pakula uses Alice to show what Darby is risking by trusting anyone, and Nixon makes the most of her limited screen time. Her watch has not been identified.