Best remembered by the public for her role as the evil yet sexy vixen Marsha Quist in Joe Dante's horror classic The Howling (1981), which brought her considerable notoriety within the genre.
She was to have reprised her role as Marsha Quist in Howling II: ... Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985) as she agreed to the sequel, but later backed out. She was suffering from pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) at that time.
Had one son: Jeremy Brooks (born 1973); she was unmarried.
She appears in publicity photos and movie stills to have mild hypertropic strabismus (a condition in which one eyeball has a tendency to look upwards more than the other). It is unknown whether or not this had any connection to her deadly brain cancer.
She wrote and directed two stage plays: "Orphan Dreams" (1993) and "Orphan Dreams Too" (1995).
After a three-year struggle with brain cancer, she passed away at Haven Hospice near her home in Palm Springs, California. Following her sudden death, she was interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cathedral City, California.
She was considered for the role of Brenda Wyatt in the fantasy adventure Highlander (1986), which went to Roxanne Hart.