A-lister is unrecognizable on set of TV show about accused parent-killer

A top TV star was completely unrecognizable as she vanished into the role of an infamous killer on the set of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.

The project is the latest season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series Monster, which previously covered Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Ed Gein.

Borden was acquitted in 1893 of killing her father and stepmother, but popular legend has still attached her to the crime with the nursery rhyme Lizzie Borden Took an Axe.

A number of well-known actresses have played Borden on television, from Elizabeth Montgomery in the 1970s to Christina Ricci and Chloë Sevigny in the 2010s.

Now another boldface name - who got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame not three weeks ago - has been glimpsed on the Los Angeles set of the Borden show, although she is playing a different historical figure entirely.

Can you guess who she is?

She is Sarah Paulson, who interestingly is not playing anyone involved in the Borden case but rather 20th century serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

Paulson, 51, had transformed when she was seen on set, wearing a scraggly strawberry blonde hairdo instantly identifiable with Wuornos.

She appeared not to be in costume yet but merely in the bathrobe she was using to change into the clothes she would wear as her character.

The acclaimed actress appeared to be enjoying the festive air of the Christmas spirit, bringing a bag from the bakery Susie Cakes to set.

Paulson has a long working relationship with Murphy, winning an Emmy as prosecutor Marcia Clark on his show The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

She can currently be seen chewing the scenery in an antagonistic role in Murphy's Kim Kardashian vehicle All's Fair, a legal drama also featuring such boldface names as Glenn Close, Niecy Nash and Naomi Watts.

Her next character Aileen Wuornos was immortalized onscreen in the 2003 movie Monster, starring Charlize Theron in an Oscar-winning performance.

The movie was directed by Patty Jenkins, who 14 years later achieved new heights of success with the Wonder Woman movie fronted by Gal Gadot.

Wuornos was born in 1956, nearly three decades after Borden died, but there remains the possibility that Murphy's show will attempt to draw a thematic link between them. 

Unsubstantiated theories have swirled through the years that Borden was molested  by the father she was accused of murdering.

Meanwhile Wuornos, a street walker, argued that she killed in self-defense, taking the lives only of johns who raped her or were trying to do so.

Wuornos was also a lesbian, while in recent decades rumors have swirled about the nature of Borden's friendship with stage actress Nance O'Neill. 

In August 1892, Borden's stepmother and father Abby and Andrew Borden were butchered with a hatchet at home in Falls River, Massachusetts. 

Lizzie, then 32 years old, was charged with the crime and went to trial the following June in what became a nationwide media frenzy.

The family's Irish maid Bridget 'Maggie' Sullivan was one of the witnesses called, and her testimony is often credited with helping secure Lizzie's acquittal. 

Although Lizzie was legally found not guilty, nobody else was subsequently charged with the murders, and the case remains cold to this day. 

On the new Ryan Murphy show, Lizzie will be portrayed by Warren Beatty and Annette Bening's 25-year-old 'nepo baby' Ella Beatty.

Meanwhile Rebecca Hall and Charlie Hunnam will feature respectively as Abby and Andrew Borden, with Phantom Thread actress Vicky Krieps as Maggie.

Nance O'Neill will be played by The End of the F***ing World actress Jessica Barden, and Lizzie's sister Emma by Billie Lourd, the daughter of Carrie Fisher and Hollywood super-agent Bryan Lourd and the granddaughter of Debbie Reynolds.