As a young girl Ellsler often was asked to play juvenile roles with her father's stock company while attending school at the local Ursuline Convent and, with the aid of her mother, ballet dance classes.

The Illustrated American, 1892[2]At the age of sixteen Ellsler became a regular player with her father's company performing roles ranging from minor bit parts to a leading lady in Shakespearean plays.

[3] On November 26, 1884, in New York, Ellsler opened as Priscilla Sefton at the Union Square Theatre in the American debut of Robert W. Buchanan's Storm Beaten and at the same venue two months later appeared as Mabel Blair in the premier production of Bartley Campbell's Separation.

[2][3][7] Over the following decades plays of note that Ellsler starred in, either in New York or on the road, would include Camille from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, Clinton Stuart's The Keepsake, Judge Not by Frank Hervey, Laura Don's Egypt: or a Daughter of the Nile and as Julia Marlowe's replacement in Barbara Frietchie by Clyde Fitch.

Ellsler last appeared on the Broadway stage at the Morosco Theatre in September 1922 after a two-year run in The Bat, a three-act mystery melodrama by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood.

Over a ten-year span she appeared in at least 22 pictures, including The Front Page (1931) as Mary Brian's mother, Daddy Long Legs (1931) in the role of Mrs. Semple, Black Fury (1935) playing Bubitschka, and the Western Drift Fence (1936) as Granny Dunn.