She is most widely known for her roles in television soap opera's including The Young Doctors as Dr. Gail Henderson, Prisoner, as Karen Travers, Return to Eden as Jilly Stewart, and briefly Home and Away as Helen Poulos.
Toppano was married to her Prisoner co-star Barry Quin who portrayed Dr. Greg Miller and subsequently TV executive and billionaire business mogul Kerry Stokes.
The daughter of Enzo Toppano, a child performer and musician of Italian descent[2] and Margaret Joan "Peggy" (nee Mortimer) (1927-2003), a vaudevillian, singer, dancer and actress, who also excelled as a composer and lyricist, they married in 1950.
Toppano's television credits include Lena in Piccolo Mondo for SBS, in Prisoner, as original character Karen Travers (a role created for her by producer/writer Reg Watson); in All the Rivers Run, as Eunice Pyke; and in Fields of Fire, as Gina Agostini.
Toppano played Countess De Lage in The Women by Clare Boothe Luce with students from Theatre Nepean, directed by Mary-Ann Gifford.