Magalhães began her career on Tupi Broadcasting's radio and TV in 1954, playing small roles and background acting, eventually getting her big break and greater roles and prominent characters. All of this way before the era of videotaping.

Moving to the state to Bahia, after her first marriage in 1960, she did not abandon her craft and joined the theatrical group 'A Barca', formed by former students of a drama school and under the direction of Luís Carlos Maciel, and appeared in great classics on the local station TV Itapoan. Invited by [Glauber Rocha,] himself, she also got a role on the now classic Black God, White Devil (1964), a landmark of Brazil's 'New Cinema' movement, shot in Monte Santo, Bahia.

In 1964 she returned to Rio de Janeiro and gave birth to her only son. The following year, she was back to work when she was invited by Nathália Timberg, one of the great Brazilian stage actresses, to perform in Nelson Rodrigues's 'Vestido de Noiva', directed by Sérgio Cardoso and staged at the Municipal Theater.

In 1966 she was invited by Walter Clark, Globo TV's newly appointed executive producer, to play a romantic role in one of the network' first telenovelas, and in which she would meet actor and future husband Carlos Alberto.

In 1970, the couple went to work for Tupi TV in São Paulo, taking roles in another telenovela. With the end of their marriage the following year, Magalhães returned to Rio and to Globo TV, where she would mostly work for the rest of her career.

At the age of 50, and because of the huge success of her character on Roque Santeiro (1985), she posed nude for a photo spread on one of most popular men's magazine of the time.

She died at 80, leaving the legacy of a six-decade-long career on TV, theatre, and films.