In 1915, around the time Ward's stage career was on the wane, American movie producer and director Cecil B. DeMille convinced her to appear in The Cheat, a silent film melodrama which co-starred Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa.
In addition to starring in The Hardest Way (1921), Ward appeared in a Phonofilm short film singing Father Time (1924), a second Phonofilm as The Perennial Flapper (1924), and in a Vitaphone short Fannie Ward in "The Miracle Woman" (1929).