After earning her degree from the University of Texas in 1975, she immediately began a lucrative performing career in New York City.
Between 1976 and 1984, she had six Broadway appearances, including prominent parts in Harold Prince’s Play Memory and Dracula with Raul Julia.
Her Off-Broadway roles in Talking Heads and Top Girls garnered her two Obie Awards.
Mahaffey gained notoriety on television as Ashley Bennett in the NBC soap opera The Doctors, which ran from 1979 to 1981 and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy.
Her breakthrough performance was in CBS’s Northern Exposure, where she won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1992 for her depiction of Eve, a funny hypochondriac.
