She was the daughter of the radical teacher, freemason and feminist Deolinda Lopes Vieira and of the anarchist intellectual, António Pinto Quartin.
At home, she was exposed to the friends of her parents who were journalists, writers, teachers and members of the feminist movement, such as Maria Lamas and Ana de Castro Osório.
After attending a theatre course at the school of Alessandro Fersen in Rome, Italy, which followed Stanislavski's system, she made her professional debut at the Teatro Experimental do Porto in 1965.
She performed in plays by a wide range of authors, such as Jean Genet, Pier Paolo Pasolini, August Strindberg, Maxim Gorki, Eça de Queirós, and Samuel Beckett.
At the end of 1967, Amélia Rey Colaço, whose company was operating at the Teatro Capitólio, invited her to replace actress Lourdes Norberto in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance.