At one time she was the personal assistant of Radio's Talent Spotter Carroll Levis, a show which toured the main theatres throughout Britain. Later she also attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She began acting in films in the early 1950s, first in supporting roles but gradually evolving into a leading lady.
One of her more prominent film roles was in a film adaptation of a D. H. Lawrence novel, The Fox, co-starring Sandy Dennis, made in 1967, which caused controversy at the time due to its lesbian theme. In the 1970s, she appeared in several giallo-type thrillers made in Italy.
Her career declined in the 1980s. Her penultimate role was in a two-part episode of the popular United States television series The Equalizer, which starred actor Edward Woodward, in 1988 as Manon Brevard Marcel.
After Stross died in 1988, Heywood retired and has never appeared onscreen since. In 1990, she married her second husband, George Danzig Druke, a former Assistant Attorney General of New York State. The couple resides in Beverly Hills, California.
