After early successes in the classics, including several leading Shakespearean roles, she spent more than four years in the US, in generally lightweight presentations.

Neilson-Terry was born in London, the daughter of the actress Julia Neilson and her husband, the actor Fred Terry.

In America she reprised her Trilby, appeared in vaudeville giving songs, recitations and excerpts from Shakespeare, performed at Yale University,[8] and played Nora Marsh in Somerset Maugham's The Land of Promise.

[1] In the Dictionary of National Biography J. C. Trewin wrote that it was "unfortunate" that Fred Terry seldom extended himself by taking the great classic roles for which his talent fitted him.

[9] The Times's obituarist of Terry's daughter made a similar point about her, commenting that after returning from the US she did not regain the outstanding position she had won for herself as a young actress.

[10] During the 1920s, Neilson-Terry toured in South Africa, and appeared in Britain in a range of performance from cabaret to pantomime at Drury Lane.

[3] In the 1930s she played Lady Macbeth and Queen Katherine in Henry VIII at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.