While growing up in Poland, Bachleda studied at the National Ballet Academy in Kraków (1989–98) and at the National Academy of Music's vocal department in Kraków (1998–2000). She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City.

At age 15, Bachleda landed a lead role in the 1999 film Pan Tadeusz, directed by Academy Award-winning Polish Director Andrzej Wajda. Four years later, she won a role in Polish soap opera Na dobre i na złe. Bachleda then began crossing over into mainstream films outside Poland, appearing in the German film Sommersturm, a coming of age story, in 2004. Bachleda-Curuś returned to Mexico to film the 2007 thriller Trade, starring Kevin Kline, an unflinching look at the world of human trafficking. Bachleda then returned to Europe to play a Jewish girl in the historical drama Der geköpfte Hahn, which took place during World War II in Transylvania, Romania. Her next film was 2009's Ondine, a film about an Irish Fisherman who thinks he catches a selkie, a mythological seal/human.

On 7 October 2009, she gave birth to a son, Henry Tadeusz Farrell, born in Los Angeles, California. The boy was fathered by Irish actor Colin Farrell and was baptized on 29 December 2009 in the Roman Catholic Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Kraków. It was reported on 15 October 2010 that Farrell and Bachleda-Curuś had separated.

Released in 2012, Bachleda-Curuś stars, in a role as the Queen of Poland, in September Eleven 1683, and appears in a lead role in The Girl Is in Trouble.