Twyford grew up in
Great Falls, Virginia. She attended the School of Theatre Arts at
Boston University's School of Theatre Arts before returning to the D.C. area to pursue acting. Before her theatre career was established, she worked as a bartender and in the costume department of the renowned
Arena Stage, where she would later star. She commonly collaborates with director Joe Banno on offbeat productions of
Shakespeare plays, including a 1999 version of
Hamlet at the Folger in which Twyford, along with three others, portrayed the protagonist as a fractured personality. Twyford is a lesbian and has been
out for her entire career. She had been with her partner, an environmentalist, since 1992. In a 2005 group interview with director Delia Taylor and playwright Jeanette Buck for
Metro Weekly, she said that she didn't feel her homosexuality had hindered her career, but that the necessity of coming out to coworkers when starting a new job "gets to be real tiring". In the same interview, she and her colleagues also discussed the paucity of female roles and the need for more female directors, playwrights and producers in both the theatre industry and Hollywood. ==Helen Hayes Awards==