Educated at Woldingham School, Bertish joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in many of its productions, including its marathon eight-and-a-half-hour version of Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, in which she played three roles. She repeated these three roles in the 1982 television version of the complete play. She was later seen in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors (1983) as Adriana.