She is known for her work on stage and for her film roles, including Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), The Fisher King (1991), Pulp Fiction (1994), and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).

She attended Middlebury College for two and a half years and, as a young adult, studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City.

Other films include Pulp Fiction, for which she received an American Comedy Award nomination; Girlfriend; Butterfly Kiss, My Life Without Me; Vampire, and Ken Park.

She has performed in many of Tennessee Williams' plays, including Summer and Smoke, The Gnädiges Fräulein, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, and the world premiere of The One Exception.

[8] In 2005, she won an Emmy as Miranda Cole in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Weak", in which she played a woman with schizophrenia.

[9] Plummer starred alongside Brad Dourif in the critically acclaimed Off Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' The Two-Character Play at New World Stages in 2013.