Her film appearances include Sarah (about the life of French Actress Sarah Bernhardt), The Day of the Triffids (1962) as the blind French girl Bettina, Mix Me a Person (1962), The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery (1966), and The Hiding Place (1975). In addition to Doctor Who, her television appearances include Suspense (in the episode "Man on a Bicycle"), Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (in the episode "Affairs and Relations"), Public Eye, Emergency Ward 10, Attorney General, Moonstrike, Compact, Probation Officer and Dial M for Murder.

According to the documentary Doctor Who: Origins, an appearance on Z-Cars prompted Ford's screen test for the role of Susan in Doctor Who in 1963. Playing the granddaughter of the Doctor, Ford was one of the three original companions to accompany william Hartnell's incarnation of the Time Lord. According to Ford, Susan was originally intended to be a character similar to those in The Champions, with telepathic abilities as well as the skills to fly the TARDIS, but in the series she was made to be far more ordinary. Her character departed from the series at the conclusion of the 1964 serial The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but returned briefly for both the series' 20th-anniversary TV special, The Five Doctors (1983), and 30th-anniversary charity special, Dimensions in Time (1993). She appeared as a different character in the independent Doctor Who spin-off film Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans (1995).

In November 2013 Ford appeared in the one-off 50th-anniversary comedy homage The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. Ford also narrated the behind the scenes look at the making of An Adventure In Space And Time, "The Making of Doctor Who". She examines the making of Doctor Who and what it was like to work with william Hartnell (The First Doctor).