[5] Her London debut was the following year: on Gielgud's recommendation Anthony Hawtrey engaged her to play Fenny, the romantic lead, in Dodie Smith's comedy Dear Octopus at the Embassy Theatre.

[6][7] In the West End, she appeared at the Winter Garden in May 1946 as Judith Drave in the long-running drama No Room at the Inn, and the St Martin's Theatre in January 1950 as Jennifer in Kenneth Horne's comedy A Lady Mislaid.

Among the leading parts she played in repertory productions were Shaw's Saint Joan and Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire.

[5] Her sole West End appearance during the late 1950s was at the Westminster Theatre in January 1959, playing Jane Pringle in a thriller, The Woman on the Stair.

In the last of these categories she starred as Elizabeth Moulton-Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Lettice in Broome Stages and Lea Markat in Somerset Maugham's The Alien Corn.

The delicacy of her performance as the mother in a triangular relationship with her gay son's partner caused the critic J. C. Trewin to "congratulat[e] Miss Watford on the really moving restraint of a portrait that makes the night worth while".

The critics found the adaptation poor, and Watford received mixed notices, rating her from excellent and the best actress in the cast to charming but shallow.

[18] In the company's opening production, Chekhov's Three Sisters, Watford, playing Masha, was "ripely sensual", "memorable" and "the essence of Chekhovian suffering", according to critics.

[3][7][19] Other stage appearances outside the West End included Mrs Conklin and Hilde Latymer in a Noël Coward double bill in Basingstoke,[20] and Gertrude in Hamlet at Ludlow.

[21] The Stage, commenting in 1974 that Watford was too rarely seen in London, asked "why it is that this supremely talented actress so seldom gets the parts she deserves in the theatres to which her abilities entitle her".

[22] During the 1970s Watford continued to appear in numerous one-off television dramas including Special Branch in 1973: but her most conspicuous screen role was as co-star with George Cole in the comedy series Don't Forget to Write!, written by Charles Wood.

The comic playing of Cole and Watford was likened by The Stage to "a superb Rolls Royce ... gliding smoothly and effortlessly along" but with "hidden power under the bonnet".

[23] Her radio roles in the 1970s included Minna in a drama about the life of Richard Wagner, leading parts in adaptations of stories by Maugham, Henry James, George Meredith and Daphne du Maurier, Mrs Davenport in the premiere of Terence Rattigan's Cause Célèbre, and Lady Britomart in Shaw's Major Barbara.

[7][24] She was last seen in the West End as Alice More opposite Charlton Heston in A Man for All Seasons, in a production transferred from the Chichester Festival; the Evening Standard found her performance so touching that it "would make a stone weep".