[2] She had wanted to become a dress designer and was working as a typist at the Ministry for Information when she did a screen test for the J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

She had another support part in My Brother's Keeper (1948) for Gainsborough Pictures, and replaced Pat Roc when she pulled out of London Belongs to Me (1948).

[12] She was the female lead in some B movies: There Is Another Sun (1951), Wide Boy (1952), A Killer Walks (1952), The Large Rope (1953), and Small Town Story (1953).

In April 1951, the Daily Mail listed Shaw on a poll from over 2,000 readers as one of the most popular British female actress in the country (after Anna Neagle, Jean Simmons, Jean Kent, Glynis Johns, Greer Garson, Petula Clark, Margaret Rutherford and Patricia Dainton, and in front of Jane Wyman.

She appeared in Carry on Nurse (1959) and The Big Day (1960), and in episodes of: All Aboard (1959); Suspense (1960); Richard the Lionheart (1962); and No Hiding Place (1962).

The film historians Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane praised the "sulky, spiky tenacity that differentiated her from many of her contemporaries".

[14] Her marriage to Albert Lieven, with whom she had a daughter, ended in divorce in 1953, and in 1954, she married Colleano,[8][15][16] who was killed in a traffic collision on 17 August 1958.

Badly affected by Colleano's death, Shaw began to drink heavily, and unable to care for her son because of her emerging alcoholism, she gave him to his paternal grandmother to raise.