The statuesque O'Neil performed in Louisville, Kentucky, opposite such actors as Wilton Lackaye, Edmund Breese, William Faversham, Tom Wise and Harriet E. MacGibbon. There were regular productions, including "Ned McCobb's Daughter", "The Front Page", "The Big Fight". A "transcontinental tour" of "The Big Fight" began in Boston, took in New Haven and Hartford, and ended at Caine's storehouse. She also acted in plays by Shakespeare and Ibsen in Boston in the late 1920s. On November 29, 1922, she was featured at the opening night of the Columbia Theatre in Sharon, Pennsylvania. For a period in the early 1900s, O'Neil owned her own acting company, in which Lionel Barrymore came to early public notice.