Started her career as a student with a major role as Koštana in a same name play in a National Theater in Belgrade.
For a role in Goya or the Hard Way to Enlightenment in 1971 (as Olivera Katarina), she was awarded at festivals in Moscow and Venice.
Her major success was in Aleksandar Petrović's I Even Met Happy Gypsies, where she played a gipsy singer named Lenče.
Olivera Katarina is also known as "the only woman Salvador Dalí knelt in front of", being amazed by her beauty and voice, after her concert in Paris.
[citation needed] In 2007, Katarina contributed songs for Marina Abramović's Balkan Erotic Epic, and portrays a goddess in Uroš Stojanović's film Čarlston za Ognjenku.
In her early youth Olivera Katarina dated water polo goalkeeper Milan Muškatirović for several years during the late 1950s.
She then for seven years lived in a common-law relationship with the powerful Yugoslav Security Service (UDBA) operative and Avala Film chairman Ratko Dražević [sr].