Born to an Irish-American father, whom she recently described as "violent" and a Jewish mother, she has one sibling, a brother.

An alumna of Wellesley College, she began working in 1960 as a photographic assistant at Harper's Bazaar, as an assistant to the legendary fashion maven, Diana Vreeland, at Vogue, and as a fashion model, and as a photographer's stylist. She gained notice in Goodbye, Columbus, but real stardom came in 1970 with Love Story. MacGraw's keen eye and sense of style was celebrated on the cover of Time. She has also worked as an interior decorator.

MacGraw has appeared in other films, such as: Convoy, Players, Just Tell Me What You Want and the television miniseries China Rose and The Winds of War.

MacGraw wrote a well-received autobiography, Moving Pictures (which she now states was "not well written"), which described her struggles with alcohol and male dependence. She was treated for the former at the Betty Ford Center. In 1991, People magazine chose her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World.

She had lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for many years after "fleeing Malibu". Having become a Hatha Yoga devotee in her fifties, she made a tremendously successful Yoga video with the American Yoga Master Erich Schiffmann, Ali MacGraw Yoga Mind and Body, which was a bestseller upon release and is still popular more than a decade later. The video's impact was such that in June 2007 Vanity Fair magazine credited her for being one of the people responsible for the practice's recent popularity in the United States. In keeping with her interests, she narrated a well-received documentary on Yoga, The Fire of Yoga in 2003.

She made her Broadway theatre debut in New York City in 2006 as a dysfunctional matriarch in the drama Festen (The Celebration). She was also included in a Seventeen magazine issue for inspiring hairstyles.

On October 24, 1969, she married film producer Robert Evans; their son, Josh Evans, is an actor and producer. They divorced in 1972 after she became involved with Steve McQueen on the set of The Getaway. They married on August 31, 1973 and divorced in 1978.

When her ex-husband, Robert Evans, received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame she accompanied him.

She divided her time living in her homes in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California.

Ali McGraw was unsuccessfully nominated for :

1970 Best Actress - Love Story

She lost to Glenda Jackson who won that year for Women in Love.