Both Czyżewska and Wajda were denounced in the Polish press and Czyżewska departed for New York once again. She didn't return to Poland until the 1980s.
Career in the United States
After leaving Poland, Czyżewska played in Putney Swope, an American film directed by Robert Downey Sr. (1969). She then played one of the main parts in Aleksander Ford's The First Circle (1971), a German, US and Danish co-production. In the film based on Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's prose, she starred as Simoczka, alongside Christopher Plummer.
In the United States, Czyżewska played Juilliard Woman in Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty (1988), a Russian's wife (with Robin Williams) in Roger Donaldson's Cadillac Man (1990), Halina in Luis Yansen's Misplaced (1990), Melinda, a witness in the trial of Laszlo in Costa Gavras's Music Box (1990), Landlady in James Dearden's Kiss Before Dying (1991), as well as Dr Luft in Coming Soon directed by Colette Burson (1999). She also starred alongside Jeanne Moreau in I Love You, I Love You Not directed by Billy Hopkins (1996), a British, French, US and German co-production.In addition, Czyżewska performed as a therapist on the hit television series Sex and the City, episode Was It Good for You? (1990) she played Dr G. Shapiro. For the TV show Third Watch in the episode Jimmy's Mountain (2000) she played the part of Katrina. She scored roles in episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Damages. She won an Obie Award in 1990 for her role in Mac Wellman's play Crowbar and continued to grace the stage in performances of such plays as Janusz Głowacki's Hunting Cockroaches and Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken on Broadway and other theatres on the East Coast.
In Poland she performed the roles of Maria, Jerzy's assistant and lover, in Debiutantka / The Debutante directed by Barbara Sass; Franciszka Felińska, Maks's wife in Limuzyna Daimler-Benz / Daimler-Benz Limousine directed by Filip Bajon; and Andzia Świdrycka in Odwet / Revenge directed by Tomasz Zygadło - all in 1981.
She appeared in Piotr Łazarkiewicz's Kocham kino / I Love Cinema (1987) as Maria Borkowska, the mother of Paweł, and as Małpka, an underground resident, in Jan Łomnicki's Szczur / The Rat (1994).
Czyżewska performed in Andrzej Wajda's The Possessed at Yale Repertory Theatre. She often performed in off-Broadway theatres. At the beginning of the 1990s she played in Roger Durling's play Canal Zone. The actress said:
It is a play about Panama in the last days of Noriega's dictatorship. (…) I play the part of a woman whose son left to study painting in the United States and discovered he was gay. For the mother living in a Latin culture it is particularly hard to accept.
In Nowy Dziennik (1992), a daily newspaper for the Polish community in the US, Maria Kornatowska wrote about Czyżewska's part:
It is a performance in a spirit of Witkacy. It is fascinating and unpredictable, on the border of reality and imagination.
In her article Kornatowska quoted a review of Czyżewska's performance published in El Diario, a Spanish New York daily: