A New Star Turn For Julianna Margulies

When you tune in to "The Sopranos" this weekend, you'll see a dark beauty sitting across the table from Tony Soprano. It's Julianna Margulies, an actress who first became a household name through her role on the TV series, "ER." Margulies is also starring on Broadway in an intense family drama called "Festen."

"Festen" goes inside a family gathering that takes place under the shadow of a recent tragedy. "It's a wonderful, very difficult experience for some people to go through," Margulies told co-anchor Harry Smith during a visit to The Early Show. "The backdrop is: We come home for our father's 60th birthday, but two months earlier our sister committed suicide. So it's on the heels of that, and this family coming together after that. And why she did commit suicide."

It's intense theater, written to inspire contemplation, not laughter. "This isn't a musical. This isn't a feel-good play," Margulies said. "This is a play that makes you really think. Makes you wonder about human behavior and how we live in such a sense of denial in order to survive."

Being on Broadway has always been a particular dream for this Sarah Lawrence graduate, and "Festen" offers opportunities for an especially profound acting experience. "It's sort of an actor's dream come true, because acting is reacting," she told Smith. "And I have 13 people up there on stage with me that I get to react with. Every night it gets better and better. Every night it changes. You know, theater, you can't come to opening night and make one judgment. It changes every night and it grows, and you grow with it."

That sort of intensity on stage creates an intense experience for audiences, as well. "This is a play that you either walk out loving or feel very uncomfortable with. But you're not going to go walk out going, 'Eh,' because it makes you feel something. And that's a privilege to be able to do," said Margulies.

Another privilege for Margulies was the opportunity to appear on "The Sopranos." The offer to appear on the HBO series came completely out of the blue. "I was home one day and I got a phone call from my manager saying, there's a part for you on 'The Sopranos.' Do you want to do it? I said, 'Yes!' Before I even saw it I just said yes," she said.

Margulies plays a real estate agent in New Jersey trying to buy some property from Tony Soprano. Needless to say, their relationship becomes complex. "It's a really good part. After I read the few episodes that they wrote for me, I called [creator] David Chase and thanked him because no one's written me such a complex, wonderful character like that."

Look for Margulies in what promises to be the cult hit of the summer, "Snakes on a Plane." It's a thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent protecting a witness on an airplane infested with poisonous snakes. The movie opens in August but is generating all sorts of advance buzz on the Internet, a phenomenon that has caught Margulies by surprise. "We thought it would open up and go away and be great on DVD," she said.