His first notable roles were in films, and he played the leading role of Stephen Dedalus in the first film adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1967, followed by Oh! What a Lovely War. His first television role was in the series “Out of the Unknown” playing a schoolmaster in the episode “Taste of Evil” 1971. A short thriller series called The Scobie Man followed in 1972. He then went on to appear in the The Sweeney (1975), Danger UXB (1979), The Nightmare Man (1981), the 1984 Doctor Who serial The Caves of Androzani, Days of Our Lives (1986), North and South (1985), Tutti Frutti (1987), Rab C. Nesbitt (1990), The New Statesman (1990), Spender (1991), Star Trek: The Next Generation (1993), the BBC adaptation of Vanity Fair (1998), EastEnders (2003), A Touch of Frost (2003) and Skins (2008). He played Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield in the 1996 television film Hillsborough.

In 2006, he appeared in the BBC docudrama Surviving Disasters, portraying Sir Matt Busby in the story of the Munich air disaster. He starred as Robert Henderson in BBC Scotland’s drama River City. He appeared as a retired police superintendent in episode 3, “Sorrow’s Child” on Southcliffe. His film roles included Ulysses, Oh! What a Lovely War, A Day at the Beach, The Eagle Has Landed, Hidden Agenda, a major role as Colonel Munro in a version of The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Judge Dredd (1995), The Acid House and Beautiful Creatures. In 2003, he appeared in May Miles Thomas’s film Solid Air.

In 2014, he stated that he had moved to Nottinghamshire with his wife, Vanessa Rawlings-Jackson, and they spent part of the year at a condo in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

On 15 July 2020, it was announced that Roëves had died at the age of 83, after a period of ill health.