[8][6] After a period of poverty and illness, she found work with the Emma Bunting Stock Company at the Fourteenth Street Theatre in 1918–19.

[9] One year later, she had changed her acting forename (albeit not for legal purposes) to Judith and had her first triumph with the play Cobra (1924) co-starring Louis Calhern, which ran for 35 performances.

She was in a short-lived revival of Mourning Becomes Electra (1932), then did Firebird (1932), Conquest, The Drums Begin (both 1933), and The Mask and the Face (1933, with Humphrey Bogart).

[15] She had a big hit with the lead in Zoe Akins' The Old Maid (1935) from the novel by Edith Wharton, in the role later played on film by Miriam Hopkins.

As the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, she was required to mentally torment the young bride, the "second Mrs. de Winter" (Joan Fontaine), even encouraging her to commit suicide, and to taunt her husband (Laurence Olivier) with the memory of his first wife, the never-seen "Rebecca" of the title.

Anderson made her appearance in Robinson Jeffers' The Tower Beyond Tragedy at the outdoor Forest Theater in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, on July 2–5, 1941.

John Burr's Carmel Pine Cone review admired Anderson's performance and proclaimed the production was “an unqualified success."

[19][20] She returned to films to make four movies at Warner Bros.: All Through the Night and Kings Row (both 1942), and Edge of Darkness and Stage Door Canteen (both 1943).

In 1942–43, on stage she played Olga in Chekhov's Three Sisters, in a production, which also featured Katharine Cornell, Ruth Gordon, Edmund Gwenn, Dennis King, and Alexander Knox.

In 1947, she triumphed as Medea in a version of Euripides' eponymous tragedy, written by poet Robinson Jeffers and produced by John Gielgud, who played Jason.

[25] On the big screen, Anderson played a golddigger in Anthony Mann's Western The Furies (1950) and made her TV debut in a 1951 adaptation of The Silver Cord for Pulitzer Prize Playhouse.

In 1953, she was directed by Charles Laughton in his own adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body with a cast also featuring Raymond Massey and Tyrone Power.

On television, she was in Macbeth (1954) with Maurice Evans, for which she won an Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Single Performance,[26] and The Elgin Hour.

Anderson appeared in a 1958 adaptation of The Bridge of San Luis Rey for The DuPont Show of the Month and played the memorable role of Big Mama, alongside Burl Ives as Big Daddy, in the screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958).

"[29] Anderson reprised her performance as Medea for TV in 1959; in the same year, she appeared in a small-screen adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence with Laurence Olivier.

In 1960, she played Madame Arkadina in Chekhov's The Seagull first at the Edinburgh Festival, and then at the Old Vic, with Tom Courtenay, Cyril Luckham and Tony Britton.

[33] In 1970, she realised a long-held ambition to play the title role of Hamlet on a national tour of the United States and at New York City's Carnegie Hall.

Her other credits that decade included The Borrowers (1973) and The Chinese Prime Minister (1974) In 1982, she returned to Medea, this time playing the Nurse opposite Zoe Caldwell in the title role.

"[36] She had professed to be a fan of the daytime genre – she had watched General Hospital for 20 years – but after signing with Santa Barbara, she complained about her lack of screen time.

[citation needed] In later years, she starred as Minx Lockridge in the daytime NBC soap opera Santa Barbara from 1984 until 1987.

[44] On 10 June 1991, in the 1991 Australian Queen's Birthday Honours, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), "in recognition of service to the performing arts".