Schiff was born Lucinda Valles in Puerto Rico in 1954 to a Puerto Rican father and an Irish-American mother. Her parents split up when she was a child, and after the death of her mother in 1969, she relocated to
New York City to live with her father, who threw her out when she was 18. She made her film debut in Steven Spielberg's 1979 film
1941, followed by a role in a television adaptation of
The Merry Wives of Windsor. and
The Thorn Birds, Schiff dated actor
Richard Dreyfuss during the late 1970s and accompanied him to the
Academy Awards ceremony in 1978 when he won his Best Actor Oscar for
The Goodbye Girl. She gave up her acting career in the early 1990s, subsequently working as an interior designer. She married film executive David Schiff in 1980, with whom she had three children. After a 15-year-long battle with recurring brain tumors, Schiff died on December 30, 2015. She was 61. ==References==