Originally a schoolteacher, during her long stage career, she appeared in support of Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, Joseph Jefferson, and Helena Modjeska; her last engagement was with Robert B. Mantell.

She did not mind admitting that she was past sixty, but she had the heart of youth and was the best-loved of screen mothers.

In a 1914 interview, she reflected on the great technological change ushered in by motion pictures, saying that it "[seemed] to be the most wonderful thing in the world that I, at my age, should be at the vanguard of my profession.

[2] She, Russell Bassett, Sarah Bernhardt, W. Chrystie Miller, Ruby Lafayette, Kate Meek (b.

1838), the veteran character actor Matt B. Snyder and Harold Lloyd regular Anna Townsend were the eight oldest people working in film during the 1910s.