The meteoric rise and tragic fall of actress Jean Seberg is dissected in this fascinatingly complex psuedo-documentary that features actress Mary Beth Hurt playing Seberg as she examines her life. Along the way, filmmaker Mark Rappaport frequently digresses and examines the lives of those famous people around her, including Jane Fonda, Otto Preminger, Clint Eastwood and more. The film begins as Preminger discovers the 17-year-old Seberg during a national talent search and decides to cast her in his ill-fated epic Saint Joan. She was for two years a Hollywood star, and then went on to become a European icon of New Wave cinema. During the late 1960s Seberg was affiliated with the Black Panther movement and became a target of the FBI. Her problems were not helped by her alcoholism and drug addiction. During her life she was married four times, attempted suicide once, miscarried, and at age 40 finally overdosed on barbiturates.