She played Miss Moneypenny in four James Bond films during the Pierce Brosnan era, and appeared in Downton Abbey as the wealthy widow Lady Rosamund Painswick, sister of Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham.

[3][4] Bond's first acting role came as a student at age 21, in the original stage production of Daisy Pulls It Off, Denise Deegan's play about a girls school, which opened at Southampton's Nuffield Theatre in 1983.

In 1985, she appeared as Julia Simmons in the BBC's televised adaptation of Agatha Christie's crime novel A Murder is Announced, part of the Miss Marple series.

[11] Bond revisited The Memory of Water, making her directorial debut on a short touring production of the play in 2000, the same year it won an Olivier award for Best New Comedy.

[12] She also performed in numerous stage productions during the 2000s, among them: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2001, as Hippolyta and Titania, again for the RSC;[8] Donald Margulies's Pulitzer prize-winning Dinner with Friends,[13] as Karen, opposite her Downton Abbey co-star Elizabeth McGovern and directed by McGovern's husband Simon Curtis, in 2001;[14] The Vagina Monologues in 2002;[15][16] and in Shakespeare's Macbeth, as Lady Macbeth opposite Sean Bean in the title role, on tour in 2002 and 2003.

"[28] In October and November 2017, Bond appeared in the English language premiere of Florian Zeller's modern French farce, The Lie, once again alongside her husband, Alexander Hanson, at an Off-West End theatre called the Menier Chocolate Factory.

[29] In 1989, Bond starred as Mary MacKenzie, a young Scottish woman, in an independent fantasy film (a the television adaptation of Oswald Wynd's novel The Ginger Tree), alongside Tim Robbins in Erik the Viking.

[30] From 2007 to 2014, Bond had a recurring role as Auntie Angela in the BBC's semi-improvised comedy series Outnumbered, alongside Hugh Dennis, Claire Skinner and David Ryall.

[30] From 2010 through 2015, Bond appeared as Lady Rosamund Painswick in the ensemble cast of ITV's drama series Downton Abbey,[30] written and produced by Julian Fellowes.

[37] In September 2023, Bond starred in the Channel 5 drama series The Inheritance, appearing alongside Rob James-Collier, Jemima Rooper, Gaynor Faye and Adil Ray.

[38] Bond has narrated a number of audiobooks including Mary Norton's The Borrowers, Joanna Trollope's An Unsuitable Match, Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries' 'Goldeneye.