Her younger brother, Thomas Nesbitt, Jr., acted in one film in 1925, before his death in South Africa in 1927 from an apparent heart attack.

Nesbitt made her debut in London in the stage revival of Arthur Wing Pinero's The Cabinet Minister (1910).

She played the part of Mother in the 1949 BBC TV remake of the drama film Elizabeth of Ladymead, and Julia in the August premiere of T.S.

Nesbitt's first Hollywood film was Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), in which she played the character role of La Principessa.

Other Broadway appearances included Aunt Alicia in the original Anita Loos adaptation of Gigi (1951), Sabrina Fair (1953), and Anastasia (1954).

She guest starred on such shows as The United States Steel Hour; Wagon Train; Naked City, Dr. Kildare and Upstairs, Downstairs (as Rachel Gurney's mother, Mabel, Countess of Southwold).

She had a small but memorable role as an elderly drug addict in French Connection II (1975) alongside Gene Hackman.

They were engaged to be married, but he died in 1915 at age 27 of blood poisoning, the result of a bite from an infected mosquito while he served in the Royal Navy during World War I.