In a career spanning over 70 years,[2] she appeared in more than 100 films, as well as many television roles, becoming a household name and a British institution.

[6][7] Her family background was largely theatrical: her mother had been an actress, while her father managed a number of entertainment venues in Morecambe, including the Royalty Theatre, where Hird made her first appearance, and the West End Pier.

[9] She worked with the British film comedian Will Hay and featured in The Entertainer (1960), which starred Laurence Olivier, as well as A Kind of Loving (1962) with Alan Bates and June Ritchie.

[5] Hird gained her highest profile in television comedy, notably the sitcoms Meet the Wife (1963–66), In Loving Memory (1979–86), Hallelujah!

[12] In December 1998, using a wheelchair, Hird played a brief but energetic cameo role as the mother of Dolly on Dinnerladies, a sarcastic character who was particularly bitter towards her daughter.

[13] Her final acting work was for BBC Radio 7, which was recorded in 2002 and broadcast some months after her death: a monologue written for her by Alan Bennett entitled The Last of the Sun, in which she played a forthright, broad-minded woman, immobile in an old people's home but still able to take a stand against the censorious and politically correct attitudes of her own daughter.

[12] A memorial service was held on 15 September 2003 at Westminster Abbey attended by more than 2,000 people, including Alan Bennett, Sir David Frost, Melvyn Bragg and Victoria Wood.

[16] In July 2019, a commemorative blue plaque to Thora Hird was installed by The Theatre and Film Guild of Great Britain and America, at the Bayswater home where she lived for over 50 years.