Hodge made her professional stage debut in the Howard Barker play "No-One Was Saved" at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 1971. She made her West End debut in "Rookery Nook" in 1972, and worked with Bob Fosse in 1973 on "Pippin". However, when applying for television work she found she had become classed as a theatre actress. Having made the breakthrough in the role of Phyllida (Trant) Erskine-Brown in "Rumpole of the Bailey", she found when trying to make the occasional return to theatre work that she had been classed as a television actress.