In 1947 she was cast with Don Stannard in the short mystery film Death in High Heels as Magda Doon, a fashion model and unintended murder victim.

The producer and director of the epic blockbuster selected her for this major role after they watched a screen-test she had made for a smaller part in the film.

With costumes by Herschel McCoy, hairstyles by Sydney Guilaroff, jewellery by Joseff of Hollywood, and two pet cheetahs on golden leashes she was the most fabulous-looking character on the screen.

[11] She had a sizeable supporting role as Miss Alice MacDonald in 20th Century Fox's CinemaScope mystery thriller 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956).

[12] By the 1960s she appeared mainly on radio and television,[1][2] including performances in Anna Karenina, The Aspern Papers, and Rembrandt, and panel game shows such as Petticoat Line and Call My Bluff.

[2] The 10 July 1954 issue of Picture Show magazine featured "The Life Story of Patricia Laffan", which included these facts: "She lists fast cars and breeding bull terriers as her hobbies.

On 25 January 1956, the Daily Reporter[specify] ran an item from Louella Parsons: “Hollywood is talking about the uncanny resemblance of British actress Patricia Laffan to Gertrude Lawrence, and the interest in Patricia to play the Lawrence biography…” Laffan was interviewed in London on 21 March 1998 by Lisa Cohen, for her book All We Know (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2012), an account of the lives of three women: New York intellectual Esther Murphy Strachey, writer-feminist Mercedes de Acosta, and British Vogue fashion editor Madge Garland.

Laffan had a tangential connection to Garland, who was romantically involved with divorce lawyer Frances (Fay) Blacket Gill, one of the first women solicitors in England.

The cause of death was given as multiple organ failure, cardiogenic shock, and myocardial infarction with secondary urinary sepsis consistent with acute kidney injury.