[citation needed] Her mother named her after the character Cassandra portrayed by Betty Field in Kings Row.
[4] After studying art, Yates was a commercial illustrator before she began cutting hair and eventually opened her own beauty shop.
; Hotel; Knots Landing; Cagney & Lacey; Thirtysomething and Murder, She Wrote in the 1984 episode "Deadly Lady".
[citation needed] In 1978, she starred as Laura Coe, a disc jockey, in the movie FM.
She also played roles in two films directed by Sam Peckinpah: Convoy (1978), and The Osterman Weekend (1983).