Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens.

[7] Terry made her first stage appearance at age nine, as Mamillius, opposite Charles Kean as Leontes, in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale at London's Princess's Theatre in 1856.

[8] She also played the roles of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1856), Prince Arthur in King John (1858), and Fleance in Macbeth (1859), continuing at the Princess's Theatre until the Keans' retirement in 1859.

[9] During the theatre's summer closures, Terry's father presented drawing-room entertainments at the Royal Colosseum, Regent's Park, London, and then on tour.

[4] Between 1861 and 1862, Terry was engaged by the Royalty Theatre in London, managed by Madame Albina de Rhona, where she acted with W. H. Kendal, Charles Wyndham and other rising actors.

She left the stage during the run of Tom Taylor's hit comedy Our American Cousin at the Haymarket, in which she played Mary Meredith.

She was uncomfortable in the role of child bride, and Watts's circle of admirers, including the salon organiser Sara Monckton Prinsep, were not welcoming.

During that short time, however, she had the opportunity to meet many cultured, talented and important people, such as poets Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; prime ministers William Ewart Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli; and Prinsep's sister, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

She would play there later that year for the first time opposite Henry Irving in the title roles of Katherine and Petruchio, David Garrick's version of The Taming of the Shrew.

[12] In 1868, despite her parents' objection, she began a relationship with the progressive architect-designer and essayist Edward William Godwin, another man whose taste she admired, whom she had met some years before.

The surname Craig was chosen to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy, but their cohabitation and children born out of wedlock were considered scandalous at the time.

In 1874 Terry played in several roles in Charles Reade's works: Philippa Chester in The Wandering Heir; Susan Merton in It's Never Too Late to Mend; and Helen Rolleston in Our Seamen.

That same year she performed at the Crystal Palace with Charles Wyndham as Volante in The Honeymoon by John Tobin and as Kate Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith.

[14] In 1876 she appeared as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal, Blanche Haye in a revival of T. W. Robertson's Ours, and the title role in Olivia by William Gorman Wills at the Court Theatre (an adaptation of The Vicar of Wakefield), where she joined the company of John Hare.

The Era wrote: "Nothing more winning and enchanting than the grace, and simplicity, and girlish sweetness of the blind Iolanthe as shown by Miss Ellen Terry has within our memory been seen upon the stage.

[18] Among her most celebrated roles with Irving were Ophelia, Pauline in The Lady of Lyons by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1878), Portia (1879), Queen Henrietta Maria in William Gorman Wills's drama Charles I (1879), Desdemona in Othello (1881), Camma in Tennyson's short tragedy The Cup (1881), Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, another of her signature roles (1882 and often thereafter), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1882), Jeanette in The Lyons Mail (1883), the title part in Reade's romantic comedy Nance Oldfield (1883), Viola in Twelfth Night (1884), Margaret in the long-running adaptation of Faust by Wills (1885), the title role in Olivia (1885, which she had played earlier at the Court Theatre), Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (1888, with incidental music by Arthur Sullivan[19]), Queen Katherine in Henry VIII (1892),[20] Cordelia in King Lear (1892), Rosamund de Clifford in Becket by Alfred Tennyson (1893), Guinevere in King Arthur by J. Comyns Carr, with incidental music by Sullivan (1895),[21] Imogen in Cymbeline (1896), the title character in Victorien Sardou and Émile Moreau's play Madame Sans-Gêne (1897) and Volumnia in Coriolanus (1901).

[5][25] In London, Terry lived in Earls Court with her children and pets during the 1880s, first in Longridge Road, then Barkston Gardens in 1889, but she kept country homes.

In the 1890s, Terry had struck up a friendship and conducted a famous correspondence with George Bernard Shaw, who wished to begin a theatrical venture with her.

In 1903, Terry formed a new theatrical company, taking over management of the Imperial Theatre with her son, after her business partner Irving ended his tenure at the Lyceum in 1902.

The new venture focused on the plays of Shaw and Henrik Ibsen, including the latter's The Vikings in 1903, with Terry as the warlike Hiordis, a misjudged role for her.

[5] She then toured England, taking engagements in Nottingham, Liverpool, and Wolverhampton, and created the title role in 1905 in J. M. Barrie's Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire at the Duke of York's Theatre.

She played Nance Oldfield in A Pageant of Great Women written in 1909 by Cicely Hamilton and directed by Terry's daughter Edith Craig.

Returning to England, she played roles such as Nell Gwynne in The First Actress (1911) by Christopher St. John (a pseudonym for Christabel Marshall), one of the first productions of the Pioneer Players theatre society, founded in 1911 by Craig and for which Ellen Terry served as President.

Her ashes are kept in a silver chalice on the right side of the chancel of the actors' church, St Paul's, Covent Garden, London, where a memorial tablet was unveiled by Sir John Martin-Harvey.

[41] Terry's daughter Edith Craig became a theatre director, producer, costume designer, and an early pioneer of the women's suffrage movement in England.