[1] A life member of the Actors Studio,[2] Baxley also studied acting under the tutelage of Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York City.

Baxley had the challenging lead role in the 1960 film The Savage Eye, portraying a divorcee exploring Los Angeles, speaking in voice-over narration and dialog without delivering any directly spoken lines on screen.

She appeared in Chekhov's The Three Sisters and Neil Simon's Plaza Suite as well as the 1960s Broadway musical She Loves Me, which co-starred Jack Cassidy, Barbara Cook and Daniel Massey.

She is perhaps better known for the role of Lady Pearl, the feisty companion of country music icon Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) in Robert Altman's film Nashville (1975) and as the mother of Sally Field's character in Norma Rae (1979).

[5] He later confirmed that Baxley was a liberal Democrat, an atheist, a woman who always put the needs and well-being of others before her own self, and that when she died, he and his wife, Iola, not only handled her funeral arrangements but also buried her in the same cemetery next to their own plots so that they all could be together as one in death, same as in life, because their bond held such a strong connection.