Dissatisfied with her acting career, she became a clothing designer at one point and set up a business with her sister in London's Soho neighbourhood.
[2] She had only done two plays when Michael Grandage offered her the position of associate director at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.
There she scored notable successes with Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine, the latter earning her the 2004 TMA Award for best director.
In the spring of 2007, she again won plaudits, this time for her direction of Dying For It, Moira Buffini's 'free adaptation' of Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide.
Mackmin directed Toby Stephens as Henry in a revival of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at the Old Vic Theatre in London from April through June 2010.