Beginning in 1965, Towers embarked on a career in theater, making her Broadway debut in the musical Anya, opposite Lillian Gish, followed by a 1966 production of Show Boat at Lincoln Center.

Her later career largely has been based in television, with roles as matriarch Clarissa McCandless on the daytime drama Capitol from 1982 to 1987, and the villainous Helena Cassadine on General Hospital, which she began portraying in 1997.

[6] Towers's family subsequently relocated to Seattle, Washington,[5] and she began working as a child radio actress on Pacific Northwest programs over the following three years.

[10] In 1963, Towers was cast in a supporting role in Samuel Fuller's thriller Shock Corridor (1963), which tells the story of a journalist who commits himself to a psychiatric hospital to solve a murder.

Fuller cast Towers again in a lead role in his following film The Naked Kiss (1964), another lurid and hard-edged thriller, in which she plays a crazed prostitute who attempts to assimilate in suburbia after having battered her pimp.

[12] Eugene Archer of The New York Times commented: "Patently absurd as the plot may be, Mr. Fuller has filmed it with flair, and he has drawn a richly amusing performance from Miss Towers.

[17] Clive Barnes praised Towers in the role,[18] and theatre writer John Kenrick calls her performance on the 1977 cast album "great.

She had a starring role as noble widow Clarissa McCandless in Capitol (1982–87, the show's entire run), playing rival to the scheming matriarch Myrna Clegg (Carolyn Jones, Marla Adams, Marj Dusay) in trying to see her son succeed in politics and the long-term love of powerful Senator Mark Denning (Ed Nelson).

A memorable storyline had her being shot by Mark's mentally ill wife Paula (Julie Adams) and later finding out that her husband Baxter (Ron Harper) was still alive.

Towers had a supporting part in the film The Next Karate Kid (1994) and appeared on television as John Abbott's former secretary, Audrey North, on The Young and the Restless (1996).

In 1998, Towers had supporting parts in the horror film The Relic (1997), and the thriller A Perfect Murder (1998), playing the mother of Gwyneth Paltrow's character.

She began playing Helena in late 1997, until the character's death in 2015; Towers made additional onscreen guest appearances in 2016, 2017, 2019 and most recently February 2020.

[22] In 2008, Towers starred in the Los Angeles revival of Arthur Allan Seidelman's production of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks;[23] the play premiered at the Geffen Playhouse in 2001 with Uta Hagen and David Hyde Pierce in the two roles.