[5] Joyce's biography states that her heavily pregnant mother went for a walk on Wandsworth Common during an interval of one of her husband's performances and began feeling contractions; searching for a house to call an ambulance, she came across a nursing home where she gave birth.

She could not sing or play the piano like her parents, who stated she "wasn't much good at anything"; however, inspired by her performances at Petersfield, Joyce became determined to "break family tradition [...] and become a straight dramatic actress".

[3] Despite her parents' disdain,[3] Joyce successfully auditioned for a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), beginning in September 1944, alongside Roger Moore.

Undeterred by her director saying that she "had nothing to offer the profession", Joyce began working as an assistant stage manager at The Grand in Croydon during the summer holidays, and joined a repertory company where she starred in productions including Escape Me Never and Autumn Crocus.

She joined the production and became a member of the Theatre Workshop alongside other contemporaries including Barbara Windsor, Murray Melvin, Victor Spinetti, Bob Grant, Stephen Lewis, and Brian Murphy.

Prior to that, she played a cameo role in Jack Clayton's The Pumpkin Eater (1964) as a psychotic young woman opposite Anne Bancroft, delivering a performance that has been called one of the "best screen acting miniatures one could hope to see.

It was not until 1973 that Joyce acquired a starring role, when she was cast as man-hungry Mildred Roper, wife of sub-letting landlord George, in the sitcom Man About the House.

The couple were seen moving from the London house in Myddleton Terrace in the previous programme, and into a newer suburban property in Peacock Crescent, Hampton Wick.

[3] At the inquest into Joyce's death, it was revealed that she had been drinking up to half a bottle of brandy a day for ten years and recently very much more,[13] and that she had, in the words of her lawyer Mario Uziell-Hamilton, become a victim of her own success, and dreaded the thought of being typecast as Mildred Roper.

Actor and comedian Kenneth Williams wrote in his diary of the performance that "she looked as though she was crying... as she got up [and left the set] one had the feeling she never intended to return.

The Life of Yootha Joyce, to which contributions were made by those who knew and worked with her, including Glynn Edwards, Murray Melvin and Barbara Windsor.

In 2019, a one-woman play depicting Joyce's life, titled Testament of Yootha, was performed by Caroline Burns-Cooke at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.