Linda Manz made her feature film debut at age 15 in Terrence Malick's period drama Days of Heaven (1978), playing an adolescent girl growing up in rural Texas in 1916. She followed this with a supporting role in The Wanderers (1979). Manz earned critical acclaim for her portrayal of a troubled teenage girl from a dysfunctional family in Dennis Hopper's drama film Out of the Blue (1980).

Manz stepped away from her acting profession in the mid-1980s and relocated to Southern California, where she lived outside the public eye and focused on raising her three children. She returned to acting in 1997 with small roles in Harmony Korine's film Gummo and David Fincher's thriller The Game. She developed a strong cult following than began in the 1990s.