She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and her stage work has included appearances with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She performed in school productions, attended an early Beatles concert, and watched Elizabeth Taylor's Butterfield 8 fifteen times.

[6] Her first performances at home included impersonations of Alma Cogan; "a nice Jewish girl, she was big in our house",[7] and she was encouraged into an acting career by her mother, who used to take her to the pantomime and push her onto the stage.

In order to get the post, she pretended that a documentary producer wanted to follow her finding her first job – this was a lie but it seemed to work.

In 2015, she starred with James Dreyfus in Mary Chase's play Harvey at Birmingham Rep, on tour and at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

In 2018, she starred with Martin Shaw in The Best Man at the Playhouse Theatre, as well as returning to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the first time in fifty years with a one-woman show of jokes and storytelling called Up For It.

She performed the Joyce Grenfell monologue The Committee for the first time on The Green Tie on the Little Yellow Dog, which was recorded 1982, and broadcast by Channel 4 in 1983.

In 1996 she appeared in the BBC comedy drama Eskimo Day, written by husband Jack Rosenthal and directed by Piers Haggard, about the trials and tribulations of three young would-be students as they arrive with their families at Queens' College, Cambridge, on interview day.

[23] She re-joined the cast of Coronation Street in August 2018, this time playing Evelyn Plummer, the long-lost grandmother of Tyrone Dobbs (Alan Halsall).

[30] On 5 February 2009, she appeared in the third series of teen drama Skins, in the episode entitled "Thomas" as Pandora Moon's Aunt Elizabeth.

[10] In 1987,[31] she was cast as the character "Beatrice Bellman" ("Beatie/BT"), a Jewish grandmother in a series of television commercials for British Telecom,[10] a role which became sufficiently well known to launch a book You Got An Ology in 1989,[32] and which was still referred to 25 years later by politicians.

[12] Her anthology, The Gibbon's In Decline But The Horse Is Stable, is a book of animal poems that is illustrated by established cartoonists, including Posy Simmonds and Gerald Scarfe, to raise money for Myeloma UK, to combat the cancer to which she lost her husband.

[37][38] In August 2024, Lipman became engaged to David Turner,[39] co-founder[40] of gym chain LA Fitness (now owned by PureGym).

Lipman also supports the work of Prospect Burma, a non-political charity that offers Burmese students the opportunity to study at university overseas.

These comments were condemned by columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown who said "Brutally straight, she sees no equivalence between the lives of the two tribes".

To English, assimilated, sometimes self-despising Jews such as Gerald Kaufman and Harold Pinter, I say: where are you going to go when the shit hits the fan?

[45]In May 2015, Lipman joined pro-Israel groups including the Zionist Federation in a protest outside the London premiere of a Palestinian play, The Siege, at Battersea Arts Centre.

She intimated that she would not be prepared to work alongside some pro-Palestinian actors, citing Maxine Peake and Miriam Margolyes as examples.

[51][52] In November 2023 Lipman joined a march against antisemitism in London alongside prominent celebrities including Vanessa Feltz, Robert Rinder, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Elliot Levey, Rachel Riley, Eddie Marsan, and David Baddiel.

[62][63] Accompanied by her son, Adam Rosenthal, she received her award from Charles, Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle on 28 October 2021.