Candice Bergen's Dramatic Turn

This Sunday night, in a dramatic change of roles, actress Candice Bergen plays Daisy Lowendahl, a fragile novelist on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the CBS Sunday night suspense thriller "Footsteps."

"It's really a story of a woman in extreme peril who sort of fights her way out of it and reclaims her strength, her confidence, and overcomes," explains Bergen on The Early Show.

The television movie is based on the never-performed stage play by famed author and playwright Ira Levin, of "Rosemary's Baby," "Deathtrap" and "Stepford Wives" fame.

Bergen explains, "Daisy is in full nervous breakdown when this movie begins and is hyperventilating and phobic about going outside and about being alone in the house and has a husband who's manipulating her to the best of his ability and also sort of masterminding her literary career. And she sets as a task for herself spending a night alone in this very huge deserted, isolated beach house. And she finds a stalker has also decided to spend the night with her in the beach house and then it just goes from bad to worse."

Bergen says it was a challenging role she enjoyed doing. "It did require kind of a sustained emotional intensity that I wasn't sure I could pull off, and I had to stay rather focused. It was intense."

Throughout her career, the Emmy award winning actress has played witty and powerful women — most notably starring for 10 years as veteran star reporter Murphy Brown on the hit CBS series of the same name.

Asked if she would like to do comedy again, and particularly "Murphy Brown," Bergen says, "I loved doing 'Murphy Brown,' but it is a lot of work. It would have to be the right show and I live in New York now, so I don't know that I'd want to move back to California full-time."

Recently, she took a break to spend more time with her daughter, Chloe, who is a senior in high school. Asked if she wants her daughter to follow her footsteps, Bergen says, "I always discourage that because I think she should find her own career outlet and if you grow up in L.A., everybody suspects you'll go into acting. She's a wonderful writer and editor of the paper and she's a terrific athlete and so I think I'll sort of let her go on a more original path."

Bergen has also been busy behind the camera taking pictures. She says, "I have just an exhibit of the photographs that I haven't lost over the years that is in November at the George Eastman House in Rochester, so it was sort of fun getting all of those together again and going over them."

"Footsteps" airs Sunday, Oct.12 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.