[10][11] Her first foray into movie-making at New York University resulted in a 1976 Student Academy Award Nomination for her satirical short film about a housewife's affair, And You Act Like One Too.

Seidelman's second theatrical film Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), featuring then-rising star Madonna, was a major box-office and critical success, launching the careers of co-stars Rosanna Arquette and Aidan Quinn and introducing a new generation of actors and performers such as John Turturro, Laurie Metcalf, Robert Joy, Mark Blum, Giancarlo Esposito, and comedian Steven Wright.

In 1994, Seidelman and screenwriter Jonathan Brett received an Academy Award nomination for best short film (live action) they co-wrote and co-produced called The Dutch Master.

Seidelman returned to feature films with Gaudi Afternoon (2001), a gender-bending detective story set in Barcelona, starring Judy Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis and Lili Taylor.

[15] Her film Boynton Beach Club (2005) was based on an original idea by her mother, Florence Seidelman, who while living in South Florida had gathered true stories of senior citizens who were suddenly back in the "dating game" after the loss of a spouse.

The ensemble cast featured studio veterans Brenda Vaccaro, Dyan Cannon, Sally Kellerman, Joseph Bologna, Michael Nouri and Len Cariou.

[16] Seidelman's next film Musical Chairs (2011) is set in the South Bronx and Manhattan and revolves around a couple taking part in a wheelchair ballroom dancing competition after the woman becomes disabled.

[7] Seidelman's next film The Hot Flashes (2013) is about middle-aged women living in small-town Texas, all former 1980s basketball champs, reuniting to challenge the current girls' high school team to raise funds for a breast-cancer treatment center.

"[19] The LA Times said, “Director Susan Seidelman takes stock of her groundbreaking career,” in an interview where she noted her "capacity for ... 'aesthetic playfulness,' of finding [her] way toward something great.

[20] Publishers Weekly called the memoir “an enthralling look at a trailblazing filmmaker’s perseverance and vision.”[21] In the 1990s and 2000s Seidelman garnered success as a television director, helming the pilot of Sex and the City, which involved some casting and developing the look and feel of the show.

Seidelman received two Emmy nominations for the Showtime film A Cooler Climate, written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman, and starring Sally Field and Judy Davis.

[22] The feminist movement of the 60s and 70s, as well as the personal filmmaking style of the French New Wave, and directors Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and John Cassavetes were also early influences.

Nora Ephron, with whom she collaborated on Cookie, was seen as a role model by Seidelman, as a woman writer and director able to combine family life with a successful film career.

[23] Among contemporaries, Seidelman notes the cerebral stories of the Coen Brothers, mid-career Woody Allen, early Martin Scorsese, and the films of Jane Campion are all favorites.

On her frequent blending of comedy with drama, Seidelman says, "If I wasn’t a filmmaker I probably would’ve liked to be a cultural anthropologist or sociologist since I’m interested in human behavior.

"[7] In Smithereens, set in the early 1980s, the trope of the plucky heroine trying to make it in the music world is upended by teenaged Wren's goal to become famous despite having no applicable creative talents.

[29] Aspects of sexual identity and parenthood are explored in Gaudi Afternoon, set in Barcelona, Spain, where translator Cassandra, middle-aged, purposefully single, with no desire for children, finds herself enmeshed in a family squabble among a pansexual group of San Francisco transplants.

Wren has more desire than creative skill, but like Giulietta Masina's character in Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, whom Seidelman notes as an inspiration, she's a survivor and her wish for recognition within the local punk-rock scene is presented without judgment.

Antoni Gaudí's eccentric, sensual architecture is the scenic backdrop to Cassandra's deeper involvement with an alternative family and their young daughter, which ultimately brings about change in her personal life.