Taylor: A Taste For The Bizarre

Lili Taylor, 32, has played her share of weird and wacky characters. As CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Mark McEwen reported, she takes on a new role in the supernatural thriller The Haunting, the No. 1 movie at the box office over the weekend.

The Haunting is the story of a house possessed by restless spirits, and Taylor plays an innocent summoned by the ghosts.

Actually, Taylor said she has had a ghostly experience in real life. "When you're dealing with something that you can't see that feels like it could hurt you, it's very scary," she said. "It was just classic sounds, like a huge bed rolling from one end of the house to the other, doors slamming, lights going on and off."

In 1988, in one of her first roles, Taylor played opposite Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza. For the past decade, she has been the darling of the independent film world, honored for such offbeat roles as a blood-sucking vampire in The Addiction (1995), a cold-blooded kidnapper in Ransom (1996) and a pistol-toting psycho in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996).

She called the character she played in Warhol "very complicated."

"[It was] very hard to find something redeeming there. I had to, though, because I've got to find some compassion for them on some level, even though the audience doesn't, or shouldn't," she said.

At the premiere of The Haunting, Taylor's co-stars said they admire her and her choice of roles.

"She's extremely unqiue," said Bruce Dern. "She's a very offbeat personality."

Said Catherine Zeta-Jones: "She's just as lovely as she is a great actress."

And leading man Liam Neeson noted, "It's great to see her in a big, wonderful Hollywood studio film."

Taylor's next project is a film about the brief life of singer Janis Joplin, who fascinates the actress, because of "her balance between the passion, the gift and the darkness."

She was awarded the first Sundance Special Jury Award for her work.

[To see the official Web site for The Haunting, click here.]