After leaving General Hospital, Brown guest-starred on several television series, including Crossing Jordan, Strong Medicine and Without a Trace. She returned to daytime in the role of Julia Morrisey Larrabee on As the World Turns from August 2004 to March 2005, in which she appeared in 109 episodes. In 2004, Brown played the lead role of Kate Vignatti in the fact-based television movie The Perfect Husband: The Laci Peterson Story. She became a regular on the popular CBS crime drama Cold Case in the fall of 2005 but was let go after only a few months (she appeared in five episodes) with the series. In 2006, she starred in her first feature film, the comedy, Big Momma's House 2 and appeared in an episode of Monk the same year. Brown was also seen in the second-season finale of The Closer and on a 2007 episode of the Fox police drama K-Ville.