Several years later, her performance in a stage production was praised by Ian McKellen, encouraging her to pursue an acting career and enrol in the Toi Whakaari national drama school from 2006 to 2008.
[2] Preston Crayford played a guest role in the soap opera Shortland Street in 2003, and made her feature film debut in the comedy Eagle vs Shark in 2007.
[3] Since then she has appeared in an ABC TV adaptation of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, in Hope and Wire (a mini-series produced by her mother about the 2010 Canterbury earthquake), government communications advisor Sophie Walsh in the Australian techno-thriller The Code,[4] and as the Sorceress Kaya in the third season of Ash vs Evil Dead.
She portrayed suffragette Annabella Maktelow (1871–1963) in Hot Words and Bold Retorts (2018), a short film directed by her mother Gaylene Preston.
[8][9] In 2024, she began starring as the detective protagonist, Anais Mallory in the crime drama series, A Remarkable Place to Die.