That would depend on whether or not you picture Kathy Bates's face when you think of Annie Wilkes.

Stephen King, who wrote the novel "Misery," which was published in 1987, has never said anything about basing Annie on anyone in particular.

However, Oscar-winner Bates and director Rob Reiner, two of the people behind the 1990 film version, say they brought a little more to the character.

In an interview with the "Dallas Morning News" in 1991, conducted just after she won the Golden Globe award for her portrayal of Wilkes, but before she won the Oscar, Bates said she did a lot of bleak research to get into character. She particularly studied the case of Genene Jones, a pediatric nurse convicted of murdering one of the children in her care, but who is suspected of having killed dozens of others. Reiner goes into this further in the director's-commentary feature of the DVD release.

The Wilkes character was also a nurse who supposedly killed patients under her care, though she also supposedly killed neighbors, friends and her own father.

Bates said she and Reiner also invented a theory -- not mentioned in King's novel -- that Wilkes was molested as a child. "It was always very important to Rob that there be some kind of logic to Annie's mentality, her craziness," she told the "Morning News."

Though King has never said anything about a connection between Wilkes and Jones, the timeline is certainly right. Jones was convicted in 1984, not long before King would have been working on "Misery," and it was a huge news story at the time. It could not have escaped the notice of King, a self-proclaimed "news junkie."

It didn't escape the notice of others in the film biz, either. Jones's horrifying tale was the focus of the 1991 NBC made-for-TV movie "Deadly Medicine" and the 2002 direct-to-video thriller "Mass Murder."

Have a question? E-mail us at questions@tvtabloid.com. Please include your name and town. Personal replies will not be provided.