Riva was nominated for a BAFTA Award for her role in Hiroshima mon amour, and won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962).

[5] She next appeared in Gillo Pontecorvo's Kapò (1960), Jean-Pierre Melville's Léon Morin, Priest (1961) and Georges Franju's Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962), for which she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 23rd Venice International Film Festival.

Riva also appeared in Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: Blue (1993), Tonie Marshall's Venus Beauty Institute (1999), Julie Delpy's Skylab (2011)[3][4] and Fiona Gordon & Dominique Abel 's Lost in Paris (2016).

Riva starred in Michael Haneke's film Amour (2012) with Jean-Louis Trintignant, playing an elderly music teacher being cared for by her husband after a series of debilitating strokes.

Riva returned to the Paris stage in February 2014, co-starring with Anne Consigny in the Marguerite Duras play Savannah Bay at the Théâtre de l'Atelier.