She has worked on notable films such as Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Three Amigos, all of which credited her as Deborah Nadoolman.

Landis served two terms as president of the Costume Designers Guild of which she has been a member for more than thirty years.

"Hollywood Costume" (the V&A catalogue of the eponymous exhibition) is the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation's 2013 Moving Image Book Award winner.

[citation needed] She was inducted as a Distinguished Alumna at the UCLA Department of Theater, Film and Television in 2005, and honored as a William Randolph Hearst Fellow at the University of Texas, Austin in 2006.

[7] She is mentioned in "The 21-Second Excitation" episode of The Big Bang Theory for her work on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Michael Jackson's Thriller.