[citation needed] D'Abo made her screen debut in the low-budget science fiction horror film Xtro (1982), playing Analise Mercier, a French au pair, who becomes a human incubator for an alien.

She appeared in the film Until September (1984) and had small roles in television mini-series based on Sidney Sheldon's novels Master of the Game (1984) and If Tomorrow Comes.

She worked on the French stage in Lyon playing Varinia in Spartacus directed by Jacques Weber in 1981, played Roxane in Cyrano de Bergerac at the Grenier de Toulouse in 1982, then worked in a 1987 French TV movie, Les Idiots (The Idiots), written by Gérard Brach, with Jean Carmet and Jean-Pierre Marielle.

D'Abo had a starring role in The Living Daylights (1987) as Kara Milovy, the sweet and vulnerable Czechoslovakian cellist and would-be sniper who falls for James Bond.

As a tie-in with the film, she also appeared in a Bond-themed Playboy cover and multi-page pictorial in the September 1987 issue, but later said in an interview with People magazine that "I wouldn't do those pictures now...

D'Abo had a supporting role as a pretentious stained-glass artist in the low-budget British comedy Leon the Pig Farmer (1992).

She reunited with her James Bond director John Glen for a guest-starring role on the television series Space Precinct and for the feature film The Point Men (2001).

She had a small role in the French film L'Enfer (Hell, 2005), directed by Danis Tanovic whose stars included fellow Bond Girl Carole Bouquet.