Following this she had roles in the primetime soap opera Falcon Crest and the 1988 revival of Mission: Impossible, the latter of which was filmed in Australia which has since become Badler's home.

[2] Badler spent her teen years in Great Neck, New York, moving to Manchester, New Hampshire, when she was in high school.

Badler's first television role was Melinda Cramer Janssen on the American daytime soap opera One Life to Live, which she played from 1977 to 1981 and again in 1983.

The following year she guest-starred as Meredith Braxton throughout the 1986–87 season of the CBS primetime soap opera Falcon Crest.

She then traveled to Australia to play agent Shannon Reed in the 1980s revival of Mission: Impossible, joining the series midway through its first season (replacing actress Terry Markwell, and her character of Casey Randall); then stayed with the series for its second season before it was cancelled in early 1990.

[8] In August 2010, it was announced that Badler would be joining the series as a new character named Diana, the benevolent mother of the Visitors' evil leader Anna[9] (Morena Baccarin).

Titled The Devil Has My Double, it is an autobiographical album which has been described as "a compulsive mix of fame, sex and solitude, set to a sweeping soundtrack of cold soul and passionate synthetics".

She then teamed up with Australian musicians Matt Doll and Byron St John to co-write her third album, Opus, which was released in September 2014.

[3] On January 7, 2020, Badler announced that her 27-year-old son, actor Harry Hains, died of a fentanyl overdose following a battle with "mental illness, chronic sleeping disorders, and addiction".