Allegedly coerced by Traynor, Boreman was soon performing as Linda Lovelace in hardcore "loops," short 8-mm silent films made for peep shows. Boreman starred in a 1969 bestiality film titled Dogarama (also known as Dog Fucker). She later denied having appeared in the film until several of the original loops proved otherwise. In 2013, Larry Revene, the cameraman who actually shot the film, spoke about it for the first time, during which he asserted that Boreman was a willing participant and that no coercion took place. Porn star Eric Edwards, who was present for the shoot, has similarly claimed there was no obvious coercion going on and that Boreman appeared to be a cooperative performer.

Boreman had contracted hepatitis from the blood transfusion she received after her 1970 car accident and underwent a liver transplant in 1987. In 2001, she was featured on E! True Hollywood Story. The following year she did a lingerie pictorial as Linda Lovelace for the magazine Leg Show. She said she did not object to the magazine shoot because "there's nothing wrong with looking sexy as long as it's done with taste."

In 1971, Boreman also starred in the golden shower film titled Piss Orgy.

In 1972, Boreman starred in Deep Throat, in which she famously performed deep-throating. The film achieved surprising and unprecedented popularity among mainstream audiences and even a review in The New York Times. It played several times daily for over ten years at theaters in the Pussycat Theater chain, where Boreman did promotions, including leaving her hand and footprints in the concrete sidewalk outside the Hollywood Pussycat. The movie later became one of the first, and highest-grossing, X-rated videotape releases.

In December 1973, Boreman made her theater debut in Pajama Tops at the Locust Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The production suffered disappointing box office performance led it to close early and Boreman's performance was panned.

In 1974, she published two "pro-porn" autobiographies, Inside Linda Lovelace and The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace.

In 1975 Boreman left Traynor for David Winters, the Producer of her 1976 film Linda Lovelace for President co-starring Micky Dolenz, which showed her on the campaign trail following a cross-country bus route mapped out in the shape of a penis. However, her career as an Actress failed to flourish, and her film appearances add up to five hours of screen time. In her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, Lovelace maintained that those films used leftover footage from Deep Throat; however, she frequently contradicted this statement. She also posed for Playboy, Bachelor, and Esquire Magazines between 1973 and 1974.

In 1976, Boreman married Larry Marchiano, a cable installer who later owned a drywall Business. They had two children, Dominic (born 1977) and Lindsay (born 1980). They lived in Center Moriches, a small town on Long Island. Boreman was then going through the liver transplant that her injuries from the automobile accident had necessitated, owing to the poorly screened blood she received in the tranfusions. For a while, marriage and particularly motherhood brought her some stability and happiness. But in 1990, Larry's Business went bankrupt and the family moved to Colorado.

The country Songwriter and singer David Allan Coe wrote a song called Linda Lovelace which is featured on his 1978 album, Nothing Sacred. The same song appears on his 1990 album 18 X-Rated Hits under the name I Made Linda Lovelace Gag.

With the publication of Ordeal in 1980, Boreman joined the anti-pornography movement. At a press conference announcing Ordeal, she leveled many of the above-noted accusations against Traynor in public for the first time. She was joined by supporters Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and members of Women Against Pornography. Boreman spoke out against pornography, stating that she had been abused and coerced. She spoke before feminist groups, at colleges, and at government hearings on pornography.

In 1986, Boreman published Out of Bondage, a memoir focusing on her life after 1974. She testified before the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, also called the "Meese Commission," in New York City, stating, "When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped. It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time." Following Boreman's testimony for the Meese Commission, she gave lectures on college campuses, decrying what she described as callous and exploitative practices in the pornography industry.

In The Other Hollywood, Boreman painted a largely unflattering picture of Marchiano, claiming he drank to excess, verbally abused her children, and was occasionally violent with her. Their divorce, in 1996, was civil, and the two remained in contact with each other for the remainder of her life.

Eric Danville, a Journalist who covered the porn industry for nearly 20 years and wrote The Complete Linda Lovelace in 2001, said Boreman never changed her version of events that had occurred 30 years earlier with Traynor. When Danville told Boreman of his book proposal, he said she was overcome with emotion and saddened he had uncovered the bestiality film, which she had initially denied making and later maintained she had been forced to star in at gunpoint.

On April 3, 2002, Boreman was involved in another automobile accident. This was more serious than the 1970 accident that had injured her. She suffered massive trauma and internal injuries. On April 22, 2002, she was taken off life support and died in Denver, Colorado, at the age of 53. Marchiano and their two children were present when she died. Boreman was interred at Parker Cemetery in Parker, Colorado.

Boreman's participation in Deep Throat was among the topics explored in the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat.

In 2008, Lovelace: A Rock Musical, based on two of Boreman's four autobiographies, debuted at the Hayworth Theater in Los Angeles. The score and libretto were written by Anna Waronker of the 1990s rock group "that dog," and Charlotte Caffey of the '80s group the Go-Gos.

Lovelace is one of the main characters of the 2010 stage play The Deep Throat Sex Scandal by David Bertolino. The play follows the life and early career of Harry Reems as he enters the pornography industry, eventually filming Deep Throat and its resultant infamy and obscenity trial in Memphis, Tennessee, and Lovelace is a central figure. In July 2013, an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to make a film version of the play raised over $25,000.

In The Other Hollywood, Boreman said she felt "used" by the anti-pornography movement. "Between Andrea Dworkin and Kitty MacKinnon, they've written so many books, and they mention my name and all that, but financially they've never helped me out. When I showed up with them for speaking engagements, I'd always get five hundred dollars or so. But I know they made a few bucks off me, just like everybody else." Thus Tom Leonard, writing for the London Daily Mail on March 26, 2012, alleged that both the porn industry and the anti-pornography movement had taken advantage of her.

As of 2011, two biographical films on Boreman were scheduled to begin production. One, titled Lovelace, went into general release on August 9, 2013, with Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman directing, Amanda Seyfried as Lovelace, and Peter Sarsgaard as Chuck Traynor. Lovelace received a limited release in 2013, but ultimately, despite drawing many positive reviews, it was a box-office failure. The other, titled Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story, starring Malin Åkerman, was to be directed by Matthew Wilder and produced by Chris Hanley and was scheduled to begin filming in early 2011. Due to a lack of financing it never went into production.