Complex sentence: She initially worked as a dancer and choreographer both on stage and on film, collaborating with the likes of directors Jean Cocteau and Carol Reed before directing films herself from the early 1950s until the early 1980s.
Split into simpler sentences: She initially worked as a dancer and choreographer both on stage and on film, collaborating with the likes of directors Jean Cocteau and Carol Reed. She directed films from the early 1950s until the early 1980s.