In the early 1930s she toured the United States with a dance troupe, but left and returned to her native Los Angeles during the Depression.
[1] She was the Executive Director of a United Way affiliate, and retired at age 66, when she looked to begin her acting career.
[2] Hardy began her acting career late in life, usually playing sweet, sometimes deceptively harmless-looking old ladies.
During her acting career, Hardy bedded John Ritter, kissed Matthew Perry, and, fitted with a walker, was asked by faux-auteur Jerry Stiller (in an episode of The King of Queens) to consider "some tasteful nudity" for a community theater production of The Gin Game.
She worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Dawson in her first film credit, the Stephen King-penned thriller, The Running Man,[3] in which she had played "Mrs. McArdle" and had to say the word "motherfucker".