Deborah Raffin appeared in several 1970s Hollywood films. She co-starred with Joseph Bottoms in the Gregory Peck-produced film The Dove (1974). Her 1976 television movie Nightmare in Badham County became a theatrical hit in mainland China, making Raffin a star there and leading to her later becoming the first Western actress ever to undertake a movie promotion tour in that country. She was nominated for both a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama and a Razzie Award for Worst Actress for her performance in Touched by Love in 1981. That same year she starred in the TV series adaptation of the hit 1978 film Foul Play, in which she and Barry Bostwick took over the roles played by Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. In 1988 she starred in James Clavell’s Noble House with Pierce Brosnan. In 1991 she appeared as Julie Vale, a telepath, in the cult film Scanners II: The New Order alongside British-born Canadian actor David Hewlett. She later appeared as Julie Camden Hastings on the television show 7th Heaven and as Dr. Hightower in the ABC Family teenager series The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

Deborah Raffin was born in Los Angeles, California, to Trudy Marshall, a Brooklyn-born former movie actress, and Phillip Jordan Raffin, a restaurateur and business executive. Her father was Jewish and her mother was from a Christian background; Raffin identified with Judaism. Raffin married movie producer Michael Viner in 1974. The couple later became audiobook publishers; they had one child and divorced in 2005. Deborah Raffin died from leukemia in her native Los Angeles on November 21, 2012, aged 59.