During her film career, Hunnicutt was typecast as a brunette sexpot. She portrayed Emaline Fetty, a con woman trying to extort money from the Clampetts in two episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies in 1966. She co-starred with James Garner in the film Marlowe (1969), in which her character was a glamorous Hollywood Actress.
Hunnicutt is the mother of two boys (through separate marriages). On November 16, 1968, Hunnicutt married British actor David Hemmings, with whom she had a son, the actor Nolan Hemmings. They divorced in 1975. Hunnicutt subsequently married Journalist Sir Simon Jenkins; the couple lived in Primrose Hill, London. With Jenkins, she had a second son, Edward. They divorced in 2009. Hunnicutt has a home in Delray Beach, Florida.
After she moved to England with Hemmings in 1970, Hunnicutt was able to use the finer range of her acting. She had a prominent role as Charlotte Stant, in Jack Pulman's television adaptation of Henry James's novel The Golden Bowl (1972). She played Lionel's wife in The Legend of Hell House (1973) and Tsarina Alexandra in Fall of Eagles (1974). She appeared as Irene Adler, opposite Jeremy Brett, in the first episode of the TV series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ("A Scandal in Bohemia", 1984). She also appeared in another Marlowe mystery in an episode of HBO's Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983), this time starring Powers Boothe. Hunnicutt returned to the United States in 1989, where she played the role of Vanessa Beaumont in Dallas until 1991.
Hunnicutt has written two books; the first, Health and Beauty in Motherhood, was published in 1984. In 2004, she published Dearest Virginia: Love Letters from a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific, which contains the letters exchanged by her parents during World War II.
In 2012, Hunnicutt was featured in an episode of the HGTV reality show Selling London. It followed her during the sale of her Victorian house in Primrose Hill and her subsequent purchase of an English country property to be close to her grandchildren.
