Irene Adler Appearances
While there are earlier renditions of Adler in some classic films and I can identify some of the actresses who played her, I can't seem to find reliable images of their performances, so I'm going to be starting in the 1960's:
The 1965 Broadway musical Baker Street was loosely based on "A Scandal in Bohemia" as well as "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House". In this case, Inga Swenson's Adler becomes an ally of Holmes rather than an opponent, which means they can have some romance. It's Broadway, after all.
the 1976 made for TV movie Sherlock Holmes in New York featured a young Charlotte Rampling as it's Irene Adler. The movie suggests that Holmes might be the father of her son, establishing a long-standing precident of creating romance between these two characters when the actress playing Irene is close to 20 years younger than the actor playing Holmes.
In 1984 a 70-year-old Peter Cushing played Holmes in the made for British TV movie The Masks of Death. Screen legend Anne Baxter played Adler in what was essentially a romantic lead.
The 1984 British tv series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was a more faithful to the original works of Doyle, and as such we got a much more accurate (re: cooler) version of Adler in the episode "A Scandal in Bohemia", adapting the original short story. She's played by Gayle Hunnicutt, who has the coolest name I've ever heard.
1992's Made for television movie Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady was part of the "Sherlock Holmes the Golden Years" series. This means that Christopher Lee got to play Sherlock, which is awesome, but when the titulat Leading Lady is meant to be a returning Irene Adler who is being played by Morgan Fairchild, who is a full 28 years younger than a 70-year-old Lee... you kinda have to wonder who the target audience here is.
Part of a series of Hallmark-produced made for television Holmes movies, 2001's The Royal Scandal was a combination of "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Bruce-Partington Plans". Adler is played by polish actress Liliana Komorowska.
Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars was a neat little made for TV movie from 2007 that followed the group of children that would sometimes help Holmes. Adler appears here, played by Downton Abbey's Anna Chancellor.
Adler's first real appearance in a Holmes feature film was 2009's Sherlock Holmes by Guy Richie. Rachel McAdams does a really good job portraying the character, although the movie does it's best to get in her way, putting her in some pretty ludacrious damsel-in-distress scenerios. Again, Holmes and Adler are romantic, and again, she's a full 13 years younger than RDJ's Holmes.
Adler was introduced in the runaway-successful BBC series Sherlock in the first episode of the second series "A Scandal in Belgravia" in 2012 and then returned in the third series episode "The Sign of Three". Lara Pulver plays her brilliantly, although... she's a dominitrix? I would never speak ill of anything in this series given how aggressive the fans can be but... was that necessary?
The 2013 Russian series Sherlock Holmes had a traditional setting but a shift in the characterizaton of Watson and Holmes, but Adler, a recurring character, is actually much closer to her original character. she's playev by Lyanka Gryu.
The American counterpart to Sherlock is 2012-2019's Elementary, where Adler was played by British actress Natalie Dormer. Here, Adler is Holmes's former lover, but she's also secretly criminal mastermind Moriarty, having faked her own death to thwart Holmes. Whether this is innovative or not depends on your personal mileage... I happen to think it was a brilliant idea, but that might just be because I think Natalie Dormer is awesome in everything.