In 1974, Stevens attended San Diego Comic Con and won first place in the first Masquerade Ball. She was part of running the masquerade at Comic Con for years after her win. Photographer Dan Golden saw a photograph of Stevens in the costume and then hired her for a non-speaking role in the student film Zyzak Is King (1980), and later photographing her for the cover of the first issue of Femme Fatales (1992).
In 1980, Stevens married her college sweetheart Dave Stevens. They moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a storyboard Artist on Raiders of the Lost Ark. The marriage ended in divorce after six months.
While going to a modeling assignment, Stevens was discovered by a Producer who cast her in a film as an extra. While leaving a modeling agency, she stopped by an office door to look at film posters on the walls. The occupant, Jacob Bressler, told her to enter and asked for her portfolio. On the basis of that, he cast her in an uncredited, non-speaking role in ...All the Marbles (1981). Stevens' first speaking role was as Linda in The Slumber Party Massacre (1982).
Stevens portrayed Julie Quinn, mother of serial killer Wayne Montgomery, in the 2007 horror film Head Case. She reprised her role in the three sequels, 2009's The Ritual, 2010's Post-Mortem, and 2013's Head Cases: Serial Killers in the Delaware Valley.
Brinke Stevens is depicted in the horror novel Bad Moon Rising, the third installment of Jonathan Maberry's "Pine Deep" trilogy, alongside Jim O'Rear, Tom Savini, and Debbie Rochon, published in 2008.
More recently she has appeared in a 2009 documentary Pretty Bloody: The Women of Horror and appeared in the 2013 remake of Die Sister, Die!.
