While she was a student at Memphis State University, Anderson won the title of Miss Memphis in 1963. Anderson was an Actress with the Front Street Repertory Theatre and debuted professionally in Memphis with the Southwestern University Players. Later, she acted with the Los Angeles Art Theatre.

Anderson decided to move to Los Angeles. In 1966, one of her first TV appearances came in a first-season episode of Star Trek, "The Conscience of the King". Anderson also featured in the first episode of the TV series Mannix, broadcast in 1967.

In 1968, Anderson won the television Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in Drama Series for her work on Ironside. She was nominated for two more Emmys for her work on that program: Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series (1969) and Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in Drama (1970).

In 1971, Anderson left Ironside and full-time TV series acting because she wanted to devote time to her new marriage to the actor Don Burnett.

Later performances included the wife of a man who inherits a notoriously haunted house in the Night Gallery episode "Fright Night" and as a witness to a mob hit in the Harry O episode "Material Witness". She accepted a recurring role (seven episodes) in the final season of Mission Impossible. She has acted in several made-for-TV movies, notably the 1973 pilot film for The Six Million Dollar Man. She starred as Kim Darby's best friend Joan Kahn in the 1973 cult horror TV classic Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. She was paired with former Ironside co-star Don Galloway in You Lie So Deep, My Love in 1977.

Anderson's last acting appearance on TV or in films was in the TV movie Return of Ironside (1993), where she reprised her role as Eve Whitfield, now the mother of a daughter.