While a teenager, New Jersey-raised Paula Sheppard was discovered by Alfred Sole while she was performing as a dancer in a local play. Sole cast the then-19-year-old as the adolescent Alice Spages in his cult horror film, Alice, Sweet Alice (1976). Several years later, she made her second and final film appearance playing a drug dealer in Slava Tsukerman's science fiction film Liquid Sky (1982), which also would develop a cult following in later years. Sheppard abandoned her acting career in the late 1980s and relocated to Seattle, Washington, where she married her husband and had a daughter, adopting a "nurturing career" outside of acting.