[5] After graduating from the Lincoln School, Foch attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, studying method acting under Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler.

[8] This was followed with a role in the biopic A Song to Remember (1945), the drama I Love a Mystery (1945); and a string of film noirs, including Escape in the Fog (1945), in which she starred as a woman who has a premonition of her kidnapping.

[9] The same year, she had the titular role in My Name is Julia Ross, a mystery about a woman who, after taking a new job working as a secretary for a family in London, awakens one morning to find herself with a different identity in a remote seaside house in rural Cornwall.

[11] Next, Foch starred in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) as Bithiah, the pharaoh's daughter, who finds the infant Moses in the bulrushes, adopts him as her son, and joins him and the Hebrews in their exodus from Egypt.

[12] Foch received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a secretary in the boardroom drama Executive Suite (1954), starring William Holden, Fredric March, and Barbara Stanwyck.

[6] In Spartacus (1960), starring Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier, she played a woman who chooses gladiators to fight to the death in the ring simply for her entertainment.

In 1980, Foch was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her guest role as Mrs. Pope on the Lou Grant episode "Hollywood".

[15] Also beginning in the 1960s, Foch began working as an instructor, teaching "Directing the Actor" classes at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California (USC), as well as at the American Film Institute.

[6][16] Later in her career, Foch appeared in War and Remembrance (1988) as the Comtesse de Chambrun, an American collaborationist in WWII Paris who employs Jane Seymour's character, Natalie Henry, as a librarian and suggests that the best place for her and her uncle would be the inaptly named "Paradise Ghetto".

In her final years, Foch appeared on the television series Just Shoot Me, Bull, Dharma & Greg, and NCIS, the latter portraying Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard's elderly mother.

[20] Those who studied with her include Rod Stewart, Julie Andrews,[21] John Ritter (with whom she co-starred in Skin Deep), Amy Heckerling, Randal Kleiser, Edward Zwick, Ron Underwood,[22] and Marshall Herskovitz.

"[16] Foch was reportedly the inspiration for the character Nina, a washed-up actress teaching acting classes from a seedy motel, in Rufus Butler Seder's film Screamplay.