Pulver's first film role was in the 1949 American-Swiss co-production "Swiss Tour". Her breakthrough movie role was "Vreneli", the wife of the lead in "Uli, der Knecht" (1954), made after the novel of Swiss author Jeremias Gotthelf. Pulver became one of the biggest stars of German-language cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, often nicknamed "Lilo" Pulver. She was very often seen in comedies, most notably "I Often Think of Piroschka" (1954), "The Zürich Engagement" (1957), "The Spessart Inn" (1958) and "Kohlhiesel's Daughters" (1962). One of her more serious film roles was as Tony Buddenbrook in "The Buddenbrooks" (1959), a cinema adaption of Thomas Mann's novel of the same name. She also appeared in another Thomas Mann adaption, "Confessions of Felix Krull" (1957) with Horst Buchholz in the title role of a charming and narcissistic conman.