[3] Born and raised in North Carolina, Loden began her career at an early age in New York City as a commercial model and chorus-line dancer.

Loden became a regular sidekick on the irreverent Ernie Kovacs Television Show in the mid-1950s and was a lifetime member of the famed Actors Studio.

"[4] Upon her parents' divorce in her early childhood, Loden was raised by her religious maternal grandparents in the Appalachian Mountains in rural Marion, North Carolina.

Loden found minor success as a pin-up girl, model, and dancer at the Copacabana nightclub before studying at the Actors Studio, intending to become an actress.

"[13] Loden made her New York theater debut in 1957 in Compulsion and also appeared on stage in The Highest Tree with Robert Redford as well as Night Circus with Ben Gazzara.

In interviews, Loden said, "Ernie felt sorry for me" and gave her another job as a stunt sidekick, rolling around in a rug or getting hit in the face with a pie.

[17] She had another son, Leo, with Kazan, and though estranged and considering divorce, they were still married at the time of her death from breast cancer at the age of 48.

Several of the film's scenes were recast and reshot by Sydney Pollack, who was hired to replace Perry, with Lancaster reportedly paying for some of the reshoots himself.

[20] At some point during her acting career, Loden came across a newspaper article about a woman who, when on trial for accomplice to bank robbery, thanked the judge for her own sentencing.

[21] Intrigued by this story, she eventually wrote the screenplay for Wanda, an existential[dubious – discuss] rumination on a poverty-stricken woman adrift in Pennsylvania coal country who becomes embroiled in a similar plot.

"[22] Fortuitously, her friend Harry Schuster had offered Loden financing for the film, so she directed it herself in collaboration with cinematographer and editor Nicholas T. Proferes on a meager budget of $115,000.

"[10] Innovative in its cinéma vérité and improvisational style, it was one of the few American films directed by a woman to be theatrically released at that time.

Film critic David Thomson wrote, "Wanda is full of unexpected moments and raw atmosphere, never settling for cliché in situation or character."

[10] Although Wanda never received proper distribution, screening briefly in New York and at universities but never nationally on the theater circuit,[24] it was noted for its groundbreaking anti-Hollywood view of a woman adrift in the American underworld.

Loden said of her title character, "She's trying to get out of this very ugly type of existence, but she doesn't have the equipment"—an independent-minded idea for a cinematic heroine at the time, making Wanda an anti-heroine.

[25] In 2017, Wanda was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

It depicts a widowed pioneer woman, played by Loden, in Kansas attempting to survive the harsh winter with her children.

[31] At the time, she had completed several other screenplays with Proferes that Kazan described as "devoted to the neglected side of American life."

[31] In June 1980, Loden was working with her acting teacher Paul Mann on a one-act play to be shown on Off-Off-Broadway.

[32] At the time of her diagnosis, Loden was prepared to direct a feature about Kate Chopin's The Awakening, but her cancer treatments prevented her from starting it.

[13]In 2012, Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden by acclaimed French author Nathalie Léger was published.

The book, taking Wanda and Loden's biography as its inspiration, combines fact and fiction to examine the nature of lived truth.