In 2024 Davidtz made her directorial debut with Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, an adaptation of the best-selling memoir of the same name by Alexandra Fuller about growing up on a farm in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

[2] Davidtz was born on August 11, 1965, in Lafayette, Indiana, to South African parents John and Jean, while her father was studying chemical engineering at Purdue University.

Performing in English and Afrikaans, she also starred in other local plays, including Stille Nag (Silent Night) and A Chain of Voices, both earning her nominations for the South African equivalent of the Tony Award.

Steven Spielberg noticed her performance in the 1992 South African film, Nag van die Negentiende and offered her the role of Helen Hirsch in Schindler's List.

[11] In 1998, Davidtz played a theologian helping Denzel Washington crack a supernatural wave of crimes in the mystery drama Fallen and a femme fatale linked to Kenneth Branagh in Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man.

[10] In 1999, Davidtz portrayed a 19th-century woman of the world in Patricia Rozema's reworking of the Jane Austen comedy Mansfield Park and played a dual role opposite Robin Williams in the futuristic fable Bicentennial Man.

[13] That year, she began her run on the CBS drama Citizen Baines, playing the daughter of a defeated United States Senate incumbent (James Cromwell) who is herself leaning towards a career in politics.

[27] Davidtz rejected the use of a prosthetic as a substitute for her nipple during a nude scene in Ray Donovan, where she portrayed a character who was a breast-cancer survivor, choosing instead to incorporate her own partially reconstructed right breast into the storyline.