After graduating, she enrolled at RADA, and while there had her first professional work, playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich.
In the 1980s Stubbs achieved success on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including playing Desdemona in Othello, directed by Trevor Nunn.
[6] Other stage work includes Saint Joan at the Strand Theatre and Heartbreak House at the Haymarket, and in 1997 she played in a London production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
In July 2004, Stubbs's play We Happy Few, directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Juliet Stevenson and Marcia Warren, opened at the Gielgud Theatre, London, after a try-out in Malvern.
[7] In September 2008 Reader's Digest announced that she had joined the magazine as a contributing editor and writer of adventure stories.