Harris was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1986, and she won the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre in 2017.

She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her portrayal of George Sand in the BBC serial Notorious Woman (1976), and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for playing Berta Palitz Weiss in the miniseries Holocaust (1978).

In 1948, she acted in Kiss and Tell at Eastbourne and Margate with Tilsa Page and John Clark and later with Anthony Cundell's company at Penzance, where she played the mother in Black Chiffon.

But RB Marriott, in The Stage, found O'Toole to be "a magnificent Prince" and Rosemary Harris "the most real and touching Ophelia".

[15]Her first film followed, Beau Brummell (1954) with Stewart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor,[11] and then a touring season with the Old Vic brought her back to Broadway in Tyrone Guthrie's production of Troilus and Cressida.

The following year she portrayed Desdemona in a television production of William Shakespeare's Othello directed by Tony Richardson Harris acted opposite Paul Rogers, Robert Hardy, and Nigel Davenport.

[18] She reprised her role in the 1963 British film adaptation acting opposite Olivier, Michael Redgrave, and Joan Plowright.

Harris gained acclaim working further with the APA, and was cast as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter opposite Robert Preston's Henry II at the Ambassador Theatre.

[23] She received Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play nominations for her roles as Anna in Harold Pinter's Old Times (1971) and Julie Cavendish in George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's The Royal Family (1975).

In 1974, Harris starred in the BBC TV serial Notorious Woman, which aired on PBS in the US as part of Masterpiece Theatre.

She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – TV Drama for the 1978 NBC miniseries Holocaust, which also starred Meryl Streep and James Woods.

Reviewing the BBC's 1983 production of To the Lighthouse, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name, John J. O'Connor of The New York Times wrote: "A luminous, flawless performance by Miss Harris makes Mrs. Ramsay as memorable on film as she is on the printed page.

Vincent Canby of The New York Times declared, "[the] film's most arresting character is Ann, a beautiful woman whose intelligence is demonstrated both in the writing and in Miss Harris's superlative performance.

She returned to Broadway in a revival of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance (1996) for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

Harris and her daughter Jennifer Ehle, played the young and elderly incarnations, respectively, of the same character in István Szabó's 1999 film Sunshine, about a Hungarian-Jewish family.

Directed by Sam Raimi, the films also starred Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, J. K. Simmons, Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina.

On 11 September 2018, a week before her 91st birthday, Harris took over the role of Mrs Higgins in the Broadway revival of My Fair Lady from Diana Rigg.