Having had success with music, she was soon offered parts in film. Her first role as an American jazz singer and gangster's moll in the television drama Queen of Clubs gave her the acting bug. She headed to the West Coast to hone her acting skills and studied method acting for a year. She soon landed a role on Darren Star's Central Park West. Films which followed are The Serpent's Lair, where she plays the femme fatale as the right hand woman to the devil; Almost Heroes, opposite Matthew Perry and Chris Farley, playing Shaquinna, a Native American squaw; Highlander: Endgame, opposite Adrian Paul, set in present-day with flashbacks to the 18th century, Barbuscia played a vengeful fashion designer caught in bitter wars of murder, passion and betrayal. In the Bridget Jones's Diary, she played the glamorous New Yorker, and girlfriend of Hugh Grant's character Daniel Cleaver. On television, she played in Keen Eddie, a series directed by Simon West.