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Greta Scacchi has been working nonstop after taking a career pause to raise her two children. She recently filmed The Book of Revelations, directed by Ana Kokkinos, worked with Jodie Foster and Peter Sarsgaard in Flight Plan and co-starred in Kevin Spacey's tribute to Bobby Darin, Beyond the Sea.

Australia is one of three countries that can claim Scacchi as a citizen. Born to an English dancer mother and an Italian painter father, she grew up in Milan but later moved to England and then, with her parents, to Australia where she worked simultaneously as a cowgirl, an Italian translator and a fashion model – all before her 18th birthday.

Returning to England at 18, she studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theater, where she was discovered shortly after graduation in 1982 by German director Dominik Graf. Graf cast her in her first film Das Zweite Geshcht, for which she had to learn to speak German. Soon after, she was cast in Heat and Dust, for which she received enthusiastic reviews, and subsequently earned praise in Dusan Makavejev's The Coca Cola Kid, the Taviani Brothers' Good Morning Babylon, Diane Kurys' Man in love, and her breakthrough role in Michael Radford's White Mischief.

The latter film brought her to the attention of Hollywood, where she became one of the most acclaimed actresses of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Among her starring roles during that period were in Alan J. Pakula's Presumed Innocent, opposite Harrison Ford; Wolfgang Petersen's Shattered, co-starring Tom Berenger and Bob Hoskins; Robert Altman's The Player; opposite Tim Robbins, Mike Figgis' The Browning Version with Albert Finney; and Jefferson in Paris alongside Nick Nolte. She also co-starred in Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow, François Girard's The Red Violin Henry Jaglom's Festival in Cannes and Looking For Alibrandi, opposite Anthony La Paglia.

Scacchi won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in the HBO feature Rasputin, opposite Ian McKellen and Alan Rickman in 1996.

The stage has remained a constant in Scacchi's life and, in 2004, she toured Italy in an Italian language version of Harold Pinter's Old Times, for which she was named Best Actress in the Italian Theatre Awards. The play was directed by Roberto Ando who previously directed her in a 2003 production of Sotto Falso Nome, an Italian-French co-production in which the polyglot actress performed entirely in French. Among her earlier theatre credits are Easy Virtue at the Chichester Festival Theatre, Sympatico and Miss Julie for the Sydney Theatre Company, A Doll's House for the Festival of Perth and In Times Like These at the Bristol Old Vic. She starred in Michael Blakemore's West End Production of Uncle Vanya with Jonathon Pryce and Michael Gambon. Scacchi just completed a successful run of Private Lives during the Sir Peter Hall season at the Royal Theatre in Bath, England.