Following these critical successes, Clarkson had a lead role opposite Kurt Russell in the sports docudrama "Miracle" (2004), about the U.S. hockey team defeating the heavily favored Soviets in the 1980 Olympics, and played the wife of a news correspondent (Robert Downey Jr.) in George Clooney's historical drama "Good Night, and Good Luck" (2005), about the conflict between journalist Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy. She then starred as the wife of a Hollywood studio executive in the independent drama "The Dying Gaul" (2005). 2006 saw the release of "The Woods", a supernatural horror film shot in 2003 in which she portrayed the headmistress of a girls' boarding school. The same year, she portrayed Sadie Burke in "All the King's Men", set in her native New Orleans.