In 1990, Rouass married Abdeslam Rouass in Tower Hamlets, London. They divorced in 2003. She went through a religious ceremony in 2005 with Nasir Khan, a businessman, however the two never legally married. In October 2006, Rouass saw a doctor regarding back pains only to find she was six months pregnant. She gave birth to a daughter in February 2007. She and Khan separated again in 2008, after which Rouass brought up her daughter by herself. Since February 2013, she has been engaged to professional snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan.

In 2000, Rouass starred in Jag Mhundra’s controversial film, Bawandar (English title; The Sand Storm), about revenge rapes in Rajasthan, and she made her English-language film debut in 2002 with a small role in The Four Feathers opposite Heath Ledger.

She starred in The Hunt Feast (2004), and in 2006 she was cast in Aditya Raj Kapoor’s film Don’t Stop Dreaming.

Rouass also appeared in the independent British film Shoot on Sight (2007) opposite Brian Cox, Om Puri and Sadie Frost. In 2008, she appeared in two films, Freebird and the New Zealand funded Apron Strings.

In 2009 she appeared as Egyptologist Sarah Page in the third series of the ITV science-fiction series Primeval. She left the show when location of filming was changed to Dublin, for series four and five, saying it would be hard to continue participating as she was a single parent.

The pair made it to the last four before being voted off the show on 6 December 2009. She failed to show up for the final on 19 December 2009 to reprise her partnership with Anton Du Beke. The show’s host, Bruce Forsyth, offered no reason for her absence although he did do so for the other missing celebrity, Phil Tufnell, who had influenza.

She played Maya Lahan, a regular character introduced in the ninth series of BBC One drama Spooks which broadcast from September 2010. She guest starred as the evil Colonel Karim in The Sarah Jane Adventures in October 2010. Rouass then joined the cast of the BBC medical drama Holby City, appearing from February 2011 as registrar Sahira Shah. She left Holby City on 17 April 2012, after just 14 months on the show, to take a break to spend time with her family. The door has been left open for her to return.

In August 2017, Rouass was caught up in the Barcelona terrorist attack, writing on Twitter during the incident that she was hiding in a restaurant freezer.