Mrs. Campbell--Beatrice Stella Tanner before she married--made her stage debut at the Alexandra Theatre, Liverpool, in 1888. She joined Ben Greet's company and there she had opportunities to play several Shakespeare parts: Rosalind in As You Like It, Viola in Twelfth Night, and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

She joined Johnston Forbes-Robertson to play Juliet in 1895, and in 1897 she played Ophelia with Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet. The next year she went to Berlin with Forbes-Robertson where she played Ophelia and Lady Macbeth. This seems to have ended her career in Shakespeare, although she would occasionally revive parts like Lady Macbeth.

She was an acclaimed actress and played parts in some important modern dramas; she acted in several plays by Henrik Ibsen and by George Bernard Shaw. In fact, Shaw wrote for her the part of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion. She and Shaw were friends and anecdotes about them abound. The first recited here is perhaps apocryphal, but the second is documented. Mrs. Campbell once remarked to Shaw that they should have a child together; think, she said, of a child with her looks and Shaw's brains. But, Shaw replied, what if the child had her brains and his looks. Mrs. Campbell was known for her biting wit, and in a letter to Shaw on November 1, 1912, she observed that when Shaw was "quite a little boy somebody ought to have said 'hush' just once."

Mrs. Campbell also had a brief career in films; between 1930 and 1935 she appeared in five motion pictures.

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