Cristina Raines

Around 1970, Raines relocated to New York City, where she signed a modeling contract with Ford Models. The company's executive, Eileen Ford, felt that Raines had the potential to be an actress, and urged her to attend local auditions. Raines was reluctant but eventually acquiesced to Ford's pressure, auditioning for a lead role in the period piece horror film Hex (1973), opposite Keith Carradine and Gary Busey. Billed as Tina Herazo, she portrayed a Native American woman whose sister curses a gang of motorcyclists. Raines and Carradine began dating during the making of the film, which was shot in South Dakota in the fall of 1971. The couple went on to have a long-term relationship that lasted until 1979. Raines later commented that in her early career, agents often tried to cast her in Spanish-speaking roles due to her Hispanic features and Spanish surname, though Raines was not fluent in Spanish. This served as an impetus for her to alter her surname to expand her casting opportunities in film: "If you were born Cristina Herazo and went into films, wouldn't you change it?" she commented in 1983. "I had to find another name in a hurry, looked out of the window and it was raining. There it was. Raines."

Her next film appearance was a minor role portraying the daughter of Charles Bronson's character in the thriller The Stone Killer (1973), directed by Michael Winner, before she was cast in Joseph Sargent's biographical television film Sunshine (1973), in which she portrayed a 20-year-old mother who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. She subsequently had a supporting part as a folk singer in Robert Altman's ensemble comedy Nashville (1975). Around this time, Raines signed a contract with Universal Pictures, and appeared in several films for the studio, though she later admitted that the contract "became very detrimental" to her career, and prevented her from doing numerous films. She reunited with director Michael Winner to appear in his supernatural horror film The Sentinel (1977), followed by a lead role in Ridley Scott's directorial debut The Duellists (also 1977), in which she co-starred with Carradine, and which focused on soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars. She subsequently co-starred as a central character in the 1978 television miniseries Centennial. Based on a novel by James Michener, the program was a 26-hour epic depicting the history of Colorado and is one of the first groundbreaking miniseries' created for television. Raines' role was that of Lucinda McKeag Zendt, an Arapaho and French-Canadian woman.

In 1979, Raines and Carradine separated, and she went on to star in the British motor-racing film Silver Dream Racer (1980) opposite Beau Bridges, and the drama Touched by Love (also 1980), co-starring with Diane Lane. From 1980 to 1982, she portrayed Lane Ballou, an exotic dancer and the mistress of a deputy in the NBC series Flamingo Road. Raines later appeared as a woman pursued by a killer in the anthology film Nightmares (1983) for Universal, originally slated to be a television series. In 1984, she starred opposite Rupert Everett in the comedy-drama film Real Life.

Raines continued to appear in television, with guest-starring roles on Murder, She Wrote, The Love Boat, and Riptide. In 1985, she starred as Poppaea in the international miniseries Quo Vadis?, based on Henryk Sienkiewicz's 1896 novel of the same name. In 1986, she married writer and producer Christopher Crowe; together, the couple has two children. Raines' final feature film credit was in the surfing-themed drama North Shore (1987). She formally retired from acting in 1991, and became a registered nurse, specializing in patients undergoing kidney dialysis.