[2][3][4] Doherty's parents divorced when she was 4 and she began acting in Sunday drama classes with her older sister Grace shortly after.

[12] Her leading performance in Alan Ayckbourn's play The Divide at the Old Vic Theatre was described by Dominic Cavendish for The Daily Telegraph as having "star-wattage as bright as anything".

[16] Doherty made a point of only watching footage of the princess at the age she was portraying her, rather than interviews of Anne in later life.

[17][18] Anne's voice is very different from Doherty's, being much lower in pitch; the actress spent time carefully learning and mimicking it, finding that it "was the key into her psyche".

[22] In 2024, she played Clare a missing child returning to her parents aged 24 in the British psychological thriller film Reawakening, alongside Jared Harris and Juliet Stevenson.