In 1969 she debuted on Broadway in The Great White Hope, and took it to Hollywood, where she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She received other nominations for All the President's Men and Kramer vs. Kramer. She also starred in the television productions of Eleanor and Franklin and Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years. Other television movies include Playing for Time, Calamity Jane, Malice in Wonderland, Blood & Orchids, In Love and War and Daughter of the Streets.
In 1983 she received another Oscar nomination for the post-nuclear war film Testament.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her as the head of the National Endowment for the Arts.