[3] She is perhaps best known—both locally and internationally—as an actress portraying elderly characters in television soap opera roles, including Prisoner, as one of the original characters, "Mum" Jeanette Brookes in which she appeared sporadically from 1979 and 1981,[6] Ward featured briefly in soap opera Sons and Daughters in 1983 as Dee Morrell, in which she was classified as a recurring guest role (season 2 - Episodes 305–337).
She also studied in Britain, and worked as a teacher of elocution and meeting Lionel Logue who was a speech therapist who helped King George VI, overcome his stutter.
Ward travelled to England in 1938, where she worked in England repertory, with contemporaries Trevor Howard and John McCallum and also in television and film, before returning to Australia in 1940, working at the Minerva Theatre and became alongside Dorothy Crawford (the sister of television impresario Hector Crawford) one of the first female radio announcers for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (then Commission) during the war, where she was billed as "The Forces Sweetheart", whilst also appearing radio play productions.
Ward featured at commercial stations, in serials from 1970s with Andrew McFarlane, Robert Bettles and Tom Farley (actor) in 1977.
She portrayed an elderly institutionalised inmate, serving an eighteen-year prison sentence for the euthanisation of her terminally-ill husband Jim Brooks.
[8] She starred with a number of her fellow Prisoner co-stars in the 1981 television movie I Can Jump Puddles as a character called Mrs. Birdsworth.