Toye's debut film short, "The Stranger Left No Card" (1952), won the Best Fictional Short Film prize at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, while her Christmas-themed short "On the Twelfth Day…" (1955) received an Oscar nomination in the Best Short Subject category. She directed films from the early 1950s until the early 1980s. Toye also was an advisor to the Arts Council and lectured in Australia.