A noted English actress, she made her film debut as a teenager in Tony Richardson's adaption of Shelagh Delaney's kitchen sink drama, A Taste of Honey in 1961, for which she won a BAFTA and the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1963, she followed those up with a Golden Globe Award as most promising newcomer.

In the first half of the 1960s, she became a symbol of the kitchen sink school of theatre, which told stories about working class folk, people who had been ignored previously in class conscious England. It was a decade that saw the rise of a generation of actors born and raised outside Metropolitan London who refused to let go of their accents or adopt posh manners. She became one of the faces of the English New Wave.

She reached her high-water mark in 1965 when she reprised her stage role in the film version of The Knack ...and How to Get It and played Omar Sharif (Yuri) and Julie Christie (Lara)'s love child in Doctor Zhivago.