Rush began her career on stage and it has always been a part of her professional life. In 1970, she earned the Sarah Siddons Award for dramatic achievement in Chicago theatre for her leading role in "Forty Carats" and brought her one-woman play "A Woman of Independent Means" to Broadway in 1984. She began working on television in the 1950s. She later became a regular performer in TV movies, miniseries, and a variety of other shows including "Peyton Place" and the soap opera "All My Children".