Her father, Fricis Arnolds Artmanis, of partial Baltic German ancestry, died in an accident at the age of 19, just four months before she was born.

[1] As a young girl, Artmane grew up playing in the fields; she was fond of wildflowers and learned to make flower arrangements and dolls in the Latvian traditional style.

While her mother worked for a landlord, her master sent young Artmane to study music and dance at a ballet class for a couple of years.

After the war in 1946, Artmane moved to Riga, and began her studies at the Daile Theatre Second Studio, eventually staying there as a member of the troupe for the next 50 years.

From 1946 to 1949, Artmane studied acting under the tutelage of the Latvian theatre director Eduards Smiļģis, the original founder of the troupe.

[2] Artmane also created important roles in Latvian plays such as Indulis and Ārija and Fire and Night under the direction of the National Actor of Latvia Rainis.

There she appeared in the title role in a stage production of The Queen of Spades based on the eponymous short story by Alexander Pushkin.

In 1963, she shot to fame in the Soviet Union with her leading role as Sonya, a beautiful and loving mother, opposite Evgeni Matveev in the popular film Blood Ties (1964).