A native of Portland, Oregon, Mitchell began her acting career in local theater, and joined the Baker Stock Company after completing high school.

In 1912, Mitchell signed with the New York Motion Picture Corporation, making her film debut in The Colonel's Ward, directed by Edward LeSaint.

[4] At the age of seventeen, Mitchell was given her first role in a local theater production,[4] joining the Baker Stock Company in Portland after graduating high school.

[5] Between 1911 and 1913, Mitchell lived in Spokane and Seattle, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia, appearing in theatrical productions, before settling in San Francisco.

[2] She appeared a number of times with Western star William S. Hart playing a leading role in those films,[10] including 1914's In the Sage Brush Country, and 1915's On the Night Stage directed by Reginald Barker.

Mitchell had a small role in the serial film The Diamond from the Sky with Lottie Pickford,[11] and in Edward Dillon's adaptation of Don Quixote (both released in 1915).

[12] In 1916 she played in The Brink with Forrest Winant and Arthur Maude,[13] in the sociological drama A Camille of the Barbary Coast (1916),[14] and as Constance Bonacieux in Charles Swickard's The Three Musketeers.

[18] She later had uncredited roles in Jacques Tourneur's The Ship That Died (1938),[12] as a nurse in the Lana Turner-led romantic comedy Marriage Is a Private Affair (1944),[12] and as a seamstress in The Unfinished Dance (1947).

[22] An article in the Press-Telegram read in part: A search still was being made by police for a 'baldish, middleaged man' who reportedly kept company recently with the never-married Miss Mitchell.