[3] Malina's parents influenced her deeply, leading her to find an interest in political theatre, as her father left Germany with his family, largely due to the rise of antisemitism in the late 1920s, after attempting to warn people of the threat posed by Nazism.

[5][6] Interested in acting from an early age, she began attending the New School for Social Research in 1945 to study theatre under Erwin Piscator.

The organization attributes this to "the difficulty of operating a unique, experimental enterprise within a cultural establishment ill-equipped to accept it", though the group returned to the United States in 1968.

[9] Malina appeared occasionally in films, beginning in 1975, when she played Al Pacino's mother in Dog Day Afternoon.

She appeared in an episode of the TV series The Sopranos in 2006 as a nun, the secret mother of Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri.

She also has a significant supporting role in the film Enemies, A Love Story (1989), based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Theater scholar Richard Schechner said: The thing about Judith Malina is that she is indefatigable, unstoppable, erupting with ideas.

[13] They co-directed the Living Theatre's activity in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, until Reznikov's unexpected death in 2008.

[13] While not on tour, Malina lived in New York City until she moved to the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey in 2013.