[2] In 1945 Leeds appeared on stage at the Harold Lloyd co-founded venue and talent showcase, the Beverly Hills Little Theatre for Professionals, when she was still a teenager, starring in a campus comedy.

Leeds appeared in the Red Skelton film The Show-Off (1946); Lady in the Lake (1947), based on a Raymond Chandler story; and in the Lana Turner vehicle Green Dolphin Street, where she played a Eurasian who drugs the leading man and rolls him for his money.

Cheryl Crane, Turner and Stephen's daughter, wrote that Leeds first tried marijuana with members of Stan Kenton's orchestra and that she was introduced to heroin while in jail.

She moved around the Midwest where she worked in nightclubs, married and divorced twice, and had three children, Shawn, Ivan and Laura, all of whom lived in Southern California.

She eventually made her way back to Los Angeles in 1966 where she studied religion, established a church[10] and volunteered at local missions and soup kitchens.