Metallic materials usually exhibit higher strength but lower ductility after being plastically deformed by conventional techniques such as rolling, drawing and extrusion. In contrast, nanostructured metals and alloys processed by severe plastic deformation (SPD) have demonstrated both high strength and high ductility. This extraordinary mechanical behavior is attributed to the unique nanostructures generated by SPD processing. The combination of ultrafine grain size and high-density dislocations appears to enable deformation by new mechanisms not active in coarse-grained metals and alloys. These results demonstrate the possibility of tailoring the microstructures of metals and alloys by SPD to obtain superior mechanical properties. Nanostructured metals and alloys processed by SPD techniques have unique nanostructures not observed in nano-materials synthesized by other techniques such as the consolidation of nanopowders. The SPD-generated nanostructures have many features related to deformation, including high dislocation densities, and high- and low-angle grain boundaries in equilibrium or non-equilibrium states. Future studies are needed to investigate the deformation mechanisms that relate the unique nanostructures with the superior mechanical properties exhibited by SPD-processed metals and alloys.