She made her film debut in Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon (1976) and held her own opposite Dustin Hoffman in Straight Time (1978). It was her powerful, sexually frank work as a woman involved with a psychiatrist in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980). The film was also her first for Roeg; they fell in love and married several years later. She went on to work with him in Eureka (1981, released in 1985), a segment of the omnibus film Aria (1988), Track 29 (also 1988) and Cold Heaven (1992) and was striking as a very Marilyn Monroe-like actress in Insignificance (1985). Russell's attempts at more "commercial" ventures have been sporadic and largely unsuccessful (1989's Physical Evidence is probably a nadir) but she was the best thing in the critically lambasted remake of The Razor's Edge (1984) and she scored a popular success as the seductive killer who intrigues Debra Winger in Black Widow (1987). She also made a high-profile television appearance as Maureen Dean in the miniseries "Blind Ambition" (1979). She was terrific as an undercover narc in Impulse (1990) and did her best to make something out of the title role in Whore (1991). Russell also narrated 1994's Being Human.