She went on to receive a Golden Globe nomination for her role in The Natural (1984), starred in the erotic drama 9½ Weeks (1986), and played Vicki Vale in Tim Burton's Batman (1989), which remains the highest-grossing film of her career.

Her other films include No Mercy (1986), Blind Date (1987), My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988), Cool World (1992), The Real McCoy (1993), I Dreamed of Africa (2000), 8 Mile (2002), The Door in the Floor (2004), Cellular (2004), The Sentinel (2006), The Burning Plain (2009), Grudge Match (2013), and Fifty Shades Darker (2017).

She made guest appearances on a few television shows such as McMillan & Wife and Charlie's Angels,[14] turning down a regular role in the latter series that eventually went to Cheryl Ladd.

[16] In 1979, she co-starred with Natalie Wood, William Devane and Steve Railsback in the miniseries remake of From Here to Eternity, reprising her role as prostitute Lorene Rogers in a 13-episode spinoff that aired in 1980.

[16] In 1981, Basinger posed for a famous nude pictorial for Playboy,[15] and made her feature debut in the critically well-received but little-seen rural drama Hard Country,[7] which she followed with the Charlton Heston-directed outdoorsy adventure Mother Lode (1982).

Her 1981 Playboy shoot was not published until 1983, when Basinger used it to promote her breakthrough role as the Bond girl Domino Petachi in Never Say Never Again (1983), where she starred opposite Sean Connery.

[18] Basinger said her subsequent Playboy appearance led to further opportunities, such as the role of the romantic interest of a baseball team star in Barry Levinson's The Natural (1984), alongside Robert Redford, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1986, Basinger starred as a New York City art gallery employee who has a brief yet intense affair with a mysterious Wall Street broker, opposite Mickey Rourke, in Adrian Lyne's controversial erotic romantic drama 9½ Weeks.

Roger Ebert praised the film, comparing it to Last Tango in Paris, and said Basinger helped "develop an erotic tension [...] that is convincing, complicated and sensual.

[23] The Hollywood Reporter, in its original review, remarked that "the uniqueness and very soul of the film [...] is achieved through the beautifully defined and probing performances of Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne and Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale".

[24] Following the success of Batman, Basinger played a glamorous singer, alongside Alec Baldwin, in the comedy The Marrying Man (1991), and starred with Richard Gere, as a woman romantically involved with her sister's psychiatrist, in the neo-noir Final Analysis (1992).

[25] In 1992, Basinger was also a guest vocalist on a re-recorded version of Was (Not Was)'s "Shake Your Head", which featured Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, and reached the UK Top 5,[26] and starred in what marked her only voice-acting project to date, the film Cool World, directed by Ralph Bakshi, as a cartoon bombshell who longs to become a real human woman.

In 1994, she reunited professionally with Baldwin for the thriller The Getaway, in which she portrayed the wife of a former con, and with director Robert Altman for the comedy Prêt-à-Porter, playing a breathlessly dim-witted cable reporter.

[10] In I Dreamed of Africa, Basinger portrayed writer and environmentalist Kuki Gallmann, with Vincent Pérez, whom she called the "most incredible actor she had ever worked with".

The film appeared on many top ten lists of the year, and in his review, Roger Ebert asserted: "There has been criticism of Kim Basinger, who is said to be too attractive and even glamorous to play [Eminem]'s mother, but [...] Her performance finds the right note somewhere between love and exasperation; it cannot be easy to live with this sullen malcontent, whose face lights up only when he sees his baby sister".

[31] Basinger starred as the wife of a children's book author, with Jeff Bridges and Jon Foster, in The Door in the Floor (2004), a drama with heavy sexual themes adapted from the novel A Widow for One Year by John Irving.

The film found a limited audience in theaters, but in his review, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, felt that "Basinger's haunted beauty burns in the memory" and called it "her finest work".

[33] Entertainment Weekly considered that "Basinger makes a vividly frightened yet resourceful woman in peril",[34] and the film was a moderate commercial success.

Basinger then played a mother having extramarital affairs in director Guillermo Arriaga's feature film debut The Burning Plain (2008), a drama narrated in a hyperlink format, opposite Charlize Theron and Jennifer Lawrence.

[38] Despite a very limited release in theaters, L.A. Weekly described that film as a "surprisingly enjoyable female revenge tale" and called Basinger's performance "first-rate".

[40] Basinger played the mother of a young man who made a promise to his deceased brother, with Zac Efron, in the supernatural drama Charlie St.

[41][42] Basinger returned to Africa in her next film, the 2012 Nigerian drama Black November, about a Niger Delta community's struggle to save their environment, which was being destroyed by excessive oil drilling.

While the film had a significant impact upon its release,[43] The Hollywood Reporter noted: "Don't be fooled by the names of Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger on the marquee.

Despite the tantalizing prospect of a reunion of the stars of a certain '80s-era hit erotic drama, their minor presence is largely extraneous to the proceedings of [this] overwrought and preachy thriller".

[44] Basinger played the role of wife in two 2013 films — the independent drama Third Person, with Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde, and the sports comedy Grudge Match, with Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone.

[47] In 2016, she had a brief role, as a crooked high-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice, in the crime comedy The Nice Guys, alongside Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.

In January 2022, Basinger collaborated with Peter Bogdanovich to create LIT Project 2: Flux, a first of its kind short film made available on the Ethereum blockchain as a non-fungible token.

[57] Britton wrote a memoir titled Longer Than Forever, published in 1998, about their time together and about her affair with Richard Gere, with whom she starred in No Mercy (1986) and Final Analysis (1992).

[59][60] In his 2008 book, A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce, Baldwin chronicled the contentious seven-year custody battle with Basinger over their daughter following their separation, contending that she spent more than $1.5 million in her efforts to deny him parental access.

[67] Some family members recommended Basinger buy the bulk of the privately owned land in the small town of Braselton, Georgia, some 1,691 acres in 1989, for $20 million, to establish it as a tourist attraction with movie studios and a film festival.