Rolle was actually born in Florida, but studied at Spelman College in Atlanta, the New School for Social Research and Hunter College in New York. She broke into show business as a dancer with the Shogola Obola Dance Company. By 1962, she was part of a generation of rich African-American talent who performed in the famed production of Jean Genet's "The Blacks" at the St. Mark's Playhouse in New York. Two years later, Rolle was in the off-Broadway production of "Blues for Mr. Charlie" and in 1965 was featured in the Broadway show "The Amen Corner". She became one of the founding members of Douglas Turner Ward's Negro Ensemble Company (along with another Lear "discovery", Roxie Roker). With Ward's company, Rolle performed in "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" and "God Is A (Guess What?)", which she also played in London in 1969.

Rolle was playing an ongoing part on the ABC soap "One Life to Live" when Lear brought her to Hollywood to play Florida Evans, the maid to the liberal "Maude", portrayed by Beatrice Arthur. She was an instant hit with the audience, her mere presence putting a crimp in Maude's brand of liberalism. Rolle was steady, took no grief, and often was the audience's voice of reason when the pampered white folks of Westchester Country became too silly. So popular was Florida, that CBS wanted a spin-off series. What resulted was actually a completely new life for the Florida character, one living in Chicago with no relation to Maude Findlay whatsoever. "Good Times" premiered in 1974 as the first network prime time series created by African-American writers--Eric Monte and Lionel Evans--but their participation ended quickly. Rolle was the wife of John Amos, living in the projects, and trying to raise three children with only two bedrooms and a whole lot of love. What she had hoped would be a sitcom in the socially-conscious mold of the times, exploring life for Blacks in urban America, instead turned into a minstrel show led by the antics of the eldest son played by Jimmie "Dyn-o-mite" Walker. An appalled Amos left the series in 1976 and an equally fed-up Rolle quit at the end of the 1976-77 season. She was lured back in the autumn of 1978 with promises that the content would be different. But, by that time the show had lost its spark and it was canceled in 1979.

Rolle, meanwhile, had won an Emmy as Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Special for her role as the housekeeper to a Southern Jewish girl who befriends a German escapee from a US prison camp in "Summer of My German Soldier" (NBC, 1978). This set the stage for Rolle to be cast in numerous "noble" roles, yet she infused them with a naturalness that played to the human aspect of the characters, not their symbol. In 1979, she was the strong grandmother to Maya Angelou in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (CBS). Rolle was an angry social worker in "The Kid Who Loved Christmas" (syndicated 1988), the first production from Eddie Murphy's TV company. She went on stage as Lena, the mother, in a revival of "A Raisin in the Sun", which she recreated for PBS' "American Playhouse" in 1989. In 1990, Rolle tried series TV again, this time as the retired housekeeper to a widowed Jewish man who brings her two sons in as partners in his deli in the short-lived "Singer & Sons" (NBC). In 1994, she played the expiring Mammy in "Scarlett", the CBS miniseries sequel to "Gone With the Wind". Rolle also returned to the New York stage in 1988 in a revival of Carson McCullers' "Member of the Wedding" in the role made famous by Ethel Waters.

Rolle made her first screen appearance in a small role in "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1963) and later appeared in Gordon Parks' "The Learning Tree" (1969). [Her sister, actress Estelle Evans, had larger roles in both films.] Rolle had a solid supporting role in "Cleopatra Jones" (1973), the blaxploitation cult favorite, in which Rolle and her karate-chopping sons held Tamara Dobson win the day. While Rolle was in "P.K. and the Kid" (1982), she made a bigger impression as Ubu Pearl, the country woman who practices "black" magic with snakes in "The Mighty Quinn" (1988), and as Idella the little-seen cook and maid in Bruce Beresford's Oscar-winning "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989). Rolle was Aunt Pauline in the flashback sequences of Maya Angelou's story in Jocelyn Morehouse's "How to Make an American Quilt" (1995) and made her final film appearance in John Singleton's "Rosewood" (1997).

Rolle spoke frequently in support of activities and groups working to create more opportunities for African-Americans and others who have been oft shut out of the Hollywood power structure and full-textured acting roles.