Makarova was born in Saint Petersburg. She enrolled in the MASTFOR theater program in 1924, where she first met Sergei Gerasimov. The two began a romantic relationship and soon married. After World War II, they moved to Moscow, where Makarova began to teach at the Russian State University of Cinematography, which was later named after her husband.^[2]

• Somebody Else's Coat (1927) – typist Dudkina
• The New Babylon (1929) – can-can dancer
• The Deserter (1933) – Greta Zelle
• The Conveyor of Death (1933) – Anna
• Seven Brave Men (1936) – doctor Zhenya Okhrimenko
• Komsomolsk (1938) – Natasha Solovyova
• The Great Dawn (1938) – Svetlana
• The New Teacher (1939) – Agrafena Shumilina
• Masquerade (1941) – Nina
• The Ural Front (1944) – Anna Ivanovna Sviridova
• The Stone Flower (1946) – the Mistress of the Copper Mountain
• The Vow (1946) – Kseniya
• The Young Guard (1948) – Yelena Koshevaya, Oleg's mother
• First-Year Student (1948) – Anna Ivanovna, teacher
• Tale of a True Man (1948) – Klavdiya Mikhailovna
• Three Encounters (1948) – Olimpiada Samoseyeva
• The Village Doctor (1951) – doctor Tatyana Nikolayevna Kozakova
• Men and Beasts (1962) – Anna Andreyevna Soboleva
• The Journalist (1967) – Olga Panina
• The Love of Mankind (1972) – architect Aleksandra Vasilyevna Petrushkova
• Daughters-Mothers (1974) – Yelena Alekseyevna Vasilyeva
• The Youth of Peter the Great (1980) – Natalya Naryshkina
• At the Beginning of Glorious Days (1980) – Natalya Naryshkina
• Lev Tolstoy (1984) – Sophia Tolstaya

• Tamara Makarova at IMDb
• Tamara Makarova at AllMovie