[1][2][3] Through her stepfather's connections, she began to read her poems on the Grande Jornal Fluminense, a show broadcast on Sundays by Rádio Tamoio.

She became the secretary of the scriptwriter Dias Gomes and the actor Rodolfo Mayer for three years and, at the same time, gradually began to appear on radio shows, in plays and reading poems.

From then on, Zezé Macedo became a strong presence in the cinema, acting for several production companies and still mainly playing humorous roles.

Among the films she participated in were De Vento em Popa (1957), directed by Carlos Manga, in which she plays an opera singer, escaping from the role of a maid for a change; O Homem do Sputnik (1959), considered by moviegoers as one of the best chanchadas, a type of film that satirised Hollywood movies, and Esse Milhão É Meu (1959).

In the 1970s, her film career was boosted with the emergence of pornochanchadas, which were a type of sex comedy that stopped short of being pornographic.

Meanwhile, on television, she began a partnership with Chico Anysio, which resulted in her two most famous characters: Biscoito, the ugly but rich wife of a drunk; and Dona Bela, a student.

Three years later, she won a special award from the jury at the Festival de Gramado for her performance in Ivan Cardoso's As Sete Vampiras (The Seven Vampires).

In 2012 her life was portrayed in the play A Revenge of the Mirror: the Story of Zezé Macedo, written by Flávio Marinho and starring Betty Gofman.