She rose to prominence by appearing in The Baby of Mâcon (1993), Legends of the Fall (1994), First Knight (1995), Sabrina (1995), Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997), and The Barber of Siberia (1998).

She won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her role in the HBO film Temple Grandin (2010).

[citation needed] Ormond first appeared on British television in the 1989 serial Traffik, about the illegal heroin trade from the far East to the streets of Europe.

Ormond played the drug-addicted daughter of the lead character, a Home Office minister in the UK government engaged in combating heroin importation.

[7] Since the late 1990s, Ormond has appeared in indie and television movies and played supporting roles in films such as Iron Jawed Angels (2004), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Che: Part One (2008), Albatross (2011), and My Week with Marilyn (2011).

[7] Ormond has an independent production company, Indican Productions, based in New York City, and she executive-produced the Cinemax Reel Life documentary Calling the Ghosts: A Story about Rape, War and Women, which won a CableACE Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and was an official selection of the Toronto and Berlin International Film Festivals.

[2][14] Ormond has been fighting human trafficking since the mid-1990s, and in 2006[15] she entered into a partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to help increase awareness efforts.