She is known for her emotional performances in melodramas, having played a number of "brow beaten" women on screen, but had a pleasant demeanor off.

[3] Born Dorothy Gwendolyn Strible in Baltimore,[4] Phillips was educated at the College of Expression of Maryland.

It also caused a breach in her working relationship with director Joseph De Grasse and his screenwriter/director wife Ida May Park.

Dorothy Phillips was married to actor-director Allen Holubar for 11 years until his death in 1923 from pneumonia, following surgery, at the age of 33.

[13] Phillips and Holubar's 1918 film The Heart of Humanity was shown at MOMA, The Museum of Modern Art in a 2014 exhibition.