Samantha acted on a shortlived TV show called Knightwatch in 1988. Shortly after that she acted in a TV movie nmaed Aaron's Way: The Harvest. The movie made it to a TV series under the same name and Samantha got to act in it, but the show was unsuccessful and got canceled. She was in 5 movies in the next two years. These movies were Cold Sassy Tree, To My Daughter, American Nuclear, 83 Hours Til Dawn, and Extreme Close up which she acted with her mother for the 2nd time. After all the hard work she was finally cast in her biggest role up to the point. Samantha played Nora Diniro in Pump Up The Volume(1991) with Christian Slater, it was during this time that Christian and her were boy and girlfriends. In 1992, Samantha played a voice role of Crysta in Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Slater was also in the movie as the character Pips, this was their 2nd, but not last movie together.

Her next big hit was as Miranda Presly in The Thing Called Love(1993) where she met Sandra Bullock and the two became best friends. Samantha dated River Pheonix during the filming of this movie. On September 7, 1996 Samantha's mother passed away from Cancer. This loss slowed Samantha down for a while but didn't discourage her enough to stop doing what she loves. So in the same yyear she made Broken Arrow her third and so far, last, movie with Slater. She has made numerous appearances on talk shows including Leno, Letterman, and Conan O'Brien. She is one of the fasted rising stars in Hollywood today, keep a look out, this girl is going places.