One True Thing is a 1998 film which tells the story of a woman who is forced to put her life on hold in order to care for her mother who is dying of cancer. It was adapted by Karen Croner from the novel by Anna Quindlen. It was directed by Carl Franklin. The movie stars Meryl Streep, Renée Zellweger, William Hurt, Tom Everett Scott, Lauren Graham and Nicky Katt. Bette Midler sings the lead song, "One True Friend", over the end credits.

Streep was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film, and her performance drew reviews from numerous critics, notaly Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle, who declared, "After 'One True Thing', critics who persist in the fiction that Streep is a cold and technical actress will need to get their heads examined. She is so instinctive and natural - so thoroughly in the moment and operating on flights on inspiration - that she's able to give us a woman who's at once wildly idiosyncratic and utterly believeable." Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan noted that Streep's role "is one of the least self-consciously dramatic and surface showy of her career, but Streep adds a level of honesty and reality that makes [her performance] one of her most moving."

When a tough New Yorker's (Renee Zellweger) mother (Meryl Streep) is stricken with a serious illness, she is forced to quit her job and her relationship with her boyfriend to take care of her, finding out a lot of things she didn't know about her mother and father (William Hurt) and her life along the way. Written by L. Lim

One True Thing is a family drama revolving around a dying mother's final months in the care of her daughter. Ellen Gulden's father rebukes her for not caring enough about her mother to quit her job, move back home to Upstate New York, and leave her soulmate behind to fend for himself in their tidy New York apartment. But, when she succumbs under the strain of guilt and does as he asks, it appears that he is too busy to carry his part of the load. In fact, it begins to look like Ellen's father is more concerned with who is going to keep his life running smoothly than who will tend to his poor wife as she struggles with cancer. George Gulden is a gifted professor and English department head, but he is an unrealized novelist. His novel, "Come Back Inn," is still unfinished after many years of torturous self-editing and rewrites long after the advance he received from his publisher is spent. Still, he basks in the reflected glow of more famous and successful writers with whom he maintains tenuous ties. This realization humanizes him for Ellen who has always revered her father as something of a literary giant in spite of his occassional daliances with graduate students. Kate Gulden, dying of cancer at only 48, loves life, and loves her children and her husband. When her suffering finally ends from an overdose of morphine, the District Attorney suspects Ellen of having helped her mother to end her life. In the end, though, it seems to be Kate who still nurtures them, somehow even from the grave. Written by Mark Fleetwood