She began acting in amateur plays while still a schoolgirl. She trained at the Liverpool Playhouse, then made her professional stage debut in 1960. She debuted onscreen in A Taste of Honey (1961), for which she won the British Academy Award, the New York Film Critics Award, and the Cannes Film Festival Award, among others. She went on to a fairly steady and busy screen career through the late '70s, after which her film work was infrequent; in the '70s she appeared primarily in Italian films.