Cecilia (Cissie or Cissy) Loftus was born in Glasgow (GB) on October 22, 1876. Her father, Ben Brown, was part of the successful variety group, Brown, Newland & Le Clerc. Her mother, Marie Loftus (who was only eighteen when Cecilia was born) became a star of burlesque, billed as 'The Sarah Bernhardt of the Halls'.

After a convent education, Cecilia became her mother's dresser, accompanying her on her tours of the great variety halls. She learnt much about the business and determined to follow in her mother's footsteps.  She made her début, at the age of fifteen, singing 'Molly Darling' at the Alhambra Theatre of Varieties, Belfast. In July 1893, she appeared at the Oxford Music Hall, presenting her impersonations of both male and female variety stars. Because of her youth, beauty and ability as a mimic, she was an instant success, attracting considerable attention.

Shortly afterwards, she was a sensation at the Tivoli Theatre in the Strand. One of the most devoted of her new admirers was Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), the critic and caricaturist. For several months, his letters to friends dealt mainly with his infatuation with her, claiming that his new-found love had reformed him. 'I have become good and am really happy at last,' he wrote to his friend, Will Rothenstein.

So enamored was he with her that he began to distance himself from Oscar Wilde who, up to then, had been his friend and mentor. On August 19, 1893, in a letter to Reggie Turner, he said, 'Apropos of my former self, Oscar was at the last night of the Haymarket [Theatre]... Nor have I ever seen Oscar so fatuous... Of course I would rather see Oscar free than sober, but still, suddenly meeting him after my simple and lovely little ways of life since the Lady Cecilia first looked out from the convent-window, I felt quite repelled.'
Cecilia was not only a star in variety, she also was a success at the Gaiety where she played opposite Millie Hylton in Don Juan. In 1894, when she was seventeen, she eloped with a friend of Max Beerbohm, the Irish writer Justin Huntly McCarthy (1860-1936). Son of the famous writer and Irish politician,  Justin McCarthy, he was twice as old as Cecilia. The couple married in Blackburn, Lancashire.

In January 1895, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the famed English actor-manager, set sail to conquer America with his wife, a large group of actors and his half bother, Max Beerbohm who was going to act as his press representative. At the same time, Cecilia Loftus and her husband also went to New York, appearing in vaudeville at Koster & Bial's - New York's most prestigious vaudeville house. She was a sensation. Tree was not and, three months later, he and his fellow thespians returned, slightly deflated to their home shores. Cecilia Loftus stayed on, in April appearing for the first time on the legitimate stage in The Highwayman at West 45th Street Theatre.
After her return, Cecilia Loftus continued - as her mother was still doing - to play the music halls but she was also determined to be a more versatile performer, able also to play romantic drama and Shakespeare.  Perhaps in order to help her assume totally different roles, she appeared at this time under the names of Cissy, Cissie, Cecilia and even Kitty Loftus.

In 1900, she and her husband returned to New York, where she first appeared in a revival of the operetta The Mascot. She then joined Helena Modjeska's company, appearing as Viola in Twelfth Night and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. After a brief spell with Daniel Frohman, she joined E. H. Sothern as his leading lady (sandwiched, as it were, between his first and second wives - Virginia Harned and Julia Marlowe). While with him, she played her most famous role - Katherine in If I Were King (1901), a play written for her by her husband that was to be often revived and would be made into the operetta The Vagabond King.

On her return to England, she revived her role in her husband's play. Then, for the 1902 spring season, Sir Henry Irving contracted her to play Margaret in his production of Faust. It opened on April 26, 1902, to mixed reviews, although there was almost universal praise for her role. The Era of May 3, 1902, enthused:

Most unusually, Cecilia Loftus continued to work successfully in both the variety and legitimate theatre. In 1905, she played Peter Pan to considerable acclaim in the second British production of Barrie's play, presented at the Trafalgar Square Theatre (later the Duke of York's).

Cecilia Loftus, 1911
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In her private life, she was less successful. Her first marriage floundered and the couple were divorced. In 1908, she married an American doctor, Alonzo Higbee Waterman, giving birth to a son the following year. In 1914, after a US tour with William Faversham (during which, among other roles, she played Juliet to his Romeo), she returned to England with both her marriage and her health in an unstable state. Always petite and frail, a series of operations after the premature birth of her child and her general unhappiness had made her increasingly dependent on alcohol and pain-killing drugs. This led to her acquiring a reputation in the theatre for inconsistency and unreliability.

In 1920, there was an acrimonious divorce. In November, 1922, she was arrested and charged with possession of atropine and morphine. After spending a night in a police cell, she was released on bail (a surety of £100 given by the actress Eva Moore) and at the Great Marlborough Street Magistrates Court, was put on probation for a year.

The following year, she left England for good, and sailed to New York where she made a rapturously received return to the Palace Theatre. She continued to top the bill there throughout the 1920s. She also appeared in a dozen films and, in 1937, was tested for the role of Aunt Pity Pat for Gone with the Wind. Her final Broadway appearance was in Little Dark Horse (1941), playing an authoritarian grandmother. Her last stage appearance was in the 1942 tour of Arsenic and Old Lace.