She was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Josephine (née Zachry), a military supply supervisor, and Robert Quinlan, a television sports director, and raised in Mill Valley, California, where she attended Tamalpais High School, studied drama, and began her acting career.
She was married to artist Warren Long in 1987. She met actor Bruce Abbott on the TV movie Trapped (1989) and they married on April 12, 1994. They have one son, Tyler, who was born in 1990.
Quinlan had an uncredited role in 1972's One Is a Lonely Number but her official credited film debut was in George Lucas's 1973 movie American Graffiti, at the age of nineteen.

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