With a film career that's kept him working non-stop since the early 1980s, acclaimed actor David Strathairn has had his fine share of good luck by starring in such hits as "The Firm," "A League of Their Own," "The River Wild" and several films with director John Sayles.

But for as much as he's done, it wasn't until after his Oscar-nominated role as legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow in "Good Night, and Good Luck" that Strathairn was starting to receive offers that took him down decidedly different routes. On one end of the spectrum was the 2008 children's fantasy, "The Spiderwick Chronicles," and the other, the horror-thriller "The Uninvited" -- which debuts on DVD (Paramount Home Entertainment) Tuesday.

In both cases, they were different things that I hadn't experienced before," Strathairn said in a recent @ The Movies interview. "For 'The Uninvited,' I had to navigate through a thriller-mystery and with 'Spiderwick,' I worked for the first time in front of a green-screen for visual effects, and had to figure out what that required. Both of them were new territories for me. You're lucky if you get a chance in this business to try out new things, and in both cases, I was pretty fortunate to have that chance."

Emily Browning stars as Anna in "The Uninvited," a teenage girl who landed in a mental institution following the fiery death of her mother -- a cancer-stricken woman who laid helplessly in family's boathouse as it exploded into flames. Appearing to be cured of her trauma, Anna is released from the institution and goes home to her father, Steven (Strathairn) and sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel).

Anna is disturbed to find out that Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), her late mother's nurse, is now Steven's girlfriend. Indifferent to her father's opinions about the steely-cold Rachael, Anna takes comfort in her Alex, who convinces her that Rachael may be responsible for her mother's death. Compounding Anna's suspicions are a series of horrifying nightmares that may give her the clues as to what led to the death of her mother.

Strathairn has long been a veteran of theater as much as he has been of films, and his involvement in "The Uninvited" was based on the strength of the script.

"I was attracted to this script essentially because it hinged on a post-traumatic stress situation with my on-screen daughter, having witnessed her mother burning," Strathairn said. "I thought it would be an interesting exploration to see what happens when a person whose had such an experience returns to the fold -- whether it be to a place or too a family -- and not having the trauma resolved. It was interesting to me to see how it affected all of us."

While Strathairn said that the whole film it doesn't go down the psychological route as much as it does a deceptive, scary path, he was intrigued with how the two story sensibilities meshed.

"It's a very thin, tricky place to navigate between -- is it going to be a psychological story or is it going to be a heart-thumping, edge-of-your-seat guessing game? For the most part, I think the filmmakers honored both," Strathairn said. "Of course, the genre requires certain kinds of editing and focus, but I think you get the feeling that my daughter is returning with a lot of baggage and it's going to affect everybody."