Susan Coetzer was born on 25 August in Cape Town. She grew up in the surrounding regions, from the Swartland to the Cape West Coast to Mossel Bay and Port Elizabeth. When she was six years old, her parents divorced and she moved to Cape Town with her mother. After school, she followed a drama course and was involved as an actress in several important theatre and television productions, for which she received several Vita and Artes awards. She played, among others, in the performances of Diepe grond by Reza de Wet, Panorama by Pieter-Dirk Uys, Koopman van Venesië by Shakespeare (for which she was nominated for the Esther Roos Award for best actress in a supporting role in Afrikaans in 1991) and the stage adaptation of Marita van der Vyver's Griet skryf ’n sprokie. On television, she played leading roles in Meester and Daisy de Melker, among others, while she also played in films such as City of blood, Kin and Jobman.
