Farr also appeared in Australian films such as December Boys and Walking on Water, for which she won an AFI award.
Her father's death in Borneo during World War 2 prompted her mother to move the family to Bondi, Sydney, where Judi and her brother Michael, grew up by the beach in their grandmother’s unit.
At the age of nine Farr won an elocution competition, reciting William Shakespeare at Sydney Town Hall.
[6] Later she played a similarly high-profile regular role in a successful sitcom, portraying dizzy wife Thelma in Kingswood Country starting in 1980.
She toured nationally and internationally with Cloudstreet and has worked for all major theatre companies in productions which include Death of a Salesman, Lettice and Lovage (opposite June Salter) and Angels in America.
Farr was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for "significant service to the performing arts as an actor" in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours.
She had been diagnosed with a squamous cell carcinoma in her parotid gland, during her time working on the A Place to Call Home.