She joined Entertainment Weekly as a senior writer in 1991, working as a film critic for the magazine alongside Owen Gleiberman from 1995 to 2013.
[3] Schwarzbaum has credited WWOR-TV's Million Dollar Movie series for sparking her interest in films through its presentation of RKO Pictures' catalog.
Lisa Schwarzbaum's early work under Leo Lerman in the arts and entertainment section of Mademoiselle further shaped her career as a film critic.
[1] She appeared on a February 2004 episode of Who Wants to Be a Super Millionaire as part of the first "Three Wise Men" panel to support the wrong answer option.
[12] In early 2015, Schwarzbaum was selected for Amtrak's inaugural writing residency program, in which she produced blog posts on her cross-country travel and wrote about her father for Tablet.