Laura Linney’s eerie experience on the Emily Rose set

Ask Laura Linney about her latest movie, Screen Gems’ supernatural production The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and the brilliant actress will recall a series of strange occurrences she encountered while doing the movie.

"In my hotel room, the television would turn on and off on its own! It could be faulty wiring or it could be something else, but it made me laugh," Linney recounts with amusement the eerie experience she had while filming the exorcism thriller.

Those late-night disturbances couldn’t have been the handiwork of demons, but considering the theme of the movie, it could very well have been. "We think it was kinda funny. If those were demons and that’s the worst thing they could do, I am not that impressed," says the film’s director Scott Derrickson.

Based on real events, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is the compelling story of a young woman who becomes desperately and inexplicably ill. After medical treatments fail to offer Emily Rose any relief, she goes to her parish priest who agrees to do exorcism. She dies and what ensues is an unexpected trial that pits science and reason against faith and spirituality.

In the movie, which opens Nov. 23 in Metro theaters, Linney portrays lawyer Erin Bruner. She takes on the case of the priest Father Moore (played by British actor Tom Wilkinson) who is accused of killing Emily Rose.

Oddly enough, Linney’s character had a series of demonic encounters at three in the morning, the so-called Witching Hour.

Tonight, however, Linney is far and safe from those otherworldly entities as she walks down the red carpet – and takes on the bright lights – for the star-studded world premiere of Emily Rose at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.

Linney is glowing and radiant in her Alberta Ferreti gown and there are no traces of the hectic day she had before the premiere. "I was working earlier in the day, so I got ready earlier and had myself made up," she reveals.

Even though she dismisses those bizarre incidents on the set, it is not so easy to reject the notion that those late-night visitors could have been the demons depicted in the film. But what could have attracted those creatures to her?

It’s easy. Linney is a luminous beauty. She is a consummate stage performer and an award-winning actress.

In an interview with her father, playwright Romulus Linney for the Bomb Magazine in 2004, Laura Linney says: "I would hear a lot of young actresses, in high school or even college, just blurt out that they wanted to be an actress, and it would almost scare me. I thought it was something that you sort of had to earn."

She says her relationship with her father "is very good." It is through him that she developed a passion for acting.

Linney did not get into acting until she came up with an impressive resumé. She spent a year at Northwestern and moved to Brown. After studying at Brown, she was admitted to Juilliard.

It was in Juilliard where Linney honed her powerful acting abilities.

In 1992, Hollywood "discovered" her finally when she was cast as a young teacher in Lorenzo’s Oil.

In 1995, she headlined the adaptation of Michael Crichton’s sci-fi bestseller Congo. For her next three films, she appeared alongside Richard Gere in Primal Fear, Clint Eastwood in Absolute Power and Jim Carrey in the critically-acclaimed Peter Weir drama The Truman Show.

It was in 2000 when she finally found the perfect role for her. As Sam Prescott in Kenneth Lonergan’s rustic tale of two siblings in You Can Count on Me, she emerged as an A-1 actress to reckon with. Her heartbreaking performance earned her the first of her three Oscar nominations and gave her a slew of awards from coast to coast in America and across the Atlantic in London.

Soon, her performances have become fodder for Oscar talk during the winter awards season. She was again Oscar-nominated for her performances in Mystic River and last year’s Kinsey.

Linney, despite the A-list status she has achieved, does not allow herself to be distracted by the Hollywood limelight. She continues to support independent filmmaking. "I rarely make big movies. Most of the movies I do are very small," she discloses.

She considers The Exorcism of Emily Rose her "big" movie for the year. She will next be seen in the quirky drama The Squid and the Whale with Jeff Daniels and in the Raymond Carver short story adaptation Jindabyne.

Asked about her Oscar chances this year, the ever-unassuming star says, "I don’t think that way. I can’t think that way."

But whatever she might think, Oscar watchers are already putting her in line as another potential nominee.