Margaret, daughter of Austin Lysight and Cornelia Hill, was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona.
[1][2] She quickly found work in minor roles at Keystone and Fine Arts; she played several minor roles in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, and also appeared in Diane of the Follies, Hands-Up, Madame Bo Peep, and Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo.
[3][4] In 1917, she got her big break when she was cast in a lead role as an ingenue in Kisaburô Kurihara's Yume No Tabiji, shot in Yokohama, Japan.
[1][5] She returned to Los Angeles in 1919, where she worked as a member of Allan Dwan's company and married photographer James Clancey.
That same year, she found employment as a film editor at Select Pictures.