Born in Manila, Seurat began her Hollywood career as a dancer in Ken Murray's "Blackouts", the popular postwar variety show at the El Capitan Theatre. Though she primarily played Asian characters, Seurat was adept at playing various nationalities; her breakthrough role was as Louisa Escalante, the blind murder victim's sister in John Frankenheimer's The Young Savages (1961).

She was frequently cast on 1960s television shows whose production staff sought performers for Asian, Hispanic, or Native American roles, including in Adventures in Paradise, The Fugitive, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Seaway, Hawaiian Eye, The Virginian, Maverick, Bonanza, Stoney Burke, Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Wild Wild West, Hawaii Five-O, The F.B.I., I Spy, The Lieutenant, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Rawhide, and Mannix.

She married producer Don Devlin in 1959; the couple divorced in 1963. The couple's son is the producer Dean Devlin. In 1970, she married writer Don Cerveris and shortly afterwards retired from acting and began using the name Pilar Cerveris. This marriage ended in 1981.

Her father, Major Al Hernandez, fought the Japanese occupiers in the Philippine jungle during World War II. He later wrote the book, Bahala na about his time in World War II. Pilar also had a full sister in the Philippines and a younger half-sister, Alana Hernandez, in Los Angeles.

Seurat died of lung cancer in 2001, aged 62, and is interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

The horror-comedy film Eight Legged Freaks (2002), produced by her son Dean, was dedicated to her.

• Pilar Seurat at IMDb
• Pilar Seurat at Memory Alpha
• Pilar Seurat at Find a Grave