Wilson was born in Rochester, Minnesota. The daughter of two IBM executives, Wilson moved to Colorado at the age of nine and graduated from Fairview High School. In 1981, she received a degree in fashion merchandising and Business from the University of Colorado Boulder.

After three years of modeling, Wilson moved to Los Angeles for a career in acting. Her first roles included the black comedy film Crimewave (1984) directed by Sam Raimi, Velvet (1984), an ABC/Aaron Spelling television movie opposite Leah Ayres, Shari Belafonte, and Mary Margaret Humes, and a guest role on the espionage series Cover Up (1984). She had a lead role with Tim Robbins in the comedy motion picture Fraternity Vacation (1985) and also appeared in a CBS television miniseries Kane & Abel (1985) with Peter Strauss. This immediately led to Our Family Honor (1985-1986), an NBC drama about Irish cops versus the Mafia, in which she co-starred with Ray Liotta, Michael Madsen, and Eli Wallach. Her career continued to flourish with a role in the television movie News at Eleven (1986) alongside Martin Sheen.

Wilson gained the role as April Stevens Ewing on the CBS soap opera Dallas (1986–1991). Her character was gunned down in the fourth episode of the final season during her honeymoon (with new husband Bobby Ewing) in Paris. She continued to make some appearances in Bobby's dream sequences later that season. In reality, Wilson was killed off and left the series due to maternity. Her performance earned her the Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Death Scene in 1991, as well as four other nominations. In 2006, she attended the TV Land Award ceremony for Dallas and in November 2008, the Dallas 30th anniversary reunion party at Southfork Ranch in Parker, Texas, with cast members Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray, Ken Kercheval, Steve Kanaly, and Charlene Tilton.

In 1993, following guest roles in the television series Matlock (opposite Clarence Gilyard's former acting mentor, Andy Griffith) and Renegade (opposite Lorenzo Lamas), Wilson played the lead female role in Hellbound opposite Chuck Norris, which led to her best-known role as Alexandra "Alex" Cahill-Walker also opposite Norris in Walker, Texas Ranger (1993-2001). In 2005 she reprised her role in the television movie Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire which ended with her character being the victim of a courthouse shooting. This left many viewers to believe that there would be a follow-up movie which was severely impaired when CBS said that they would no longer be producing "Sunday Night Movie of the Week" projects. She also co-starred in the Showtime movie Past Tense (1994).

In 2006, Wilson appeared in Fragile, the first short film by documentary filmmaker Fredric Lean. She played the lead role in television movies Mystery Woman: Game Time (2005) and Anna's Storm (2007). She produced and starred in independent films Killing Down (2006), The Gundown (2011), Easy Rider: The Ride Back (2012), and Dug Up (2013). She co-starred in the television series Pink (2007-2008) and had a guest role in the television series DeVanity (2014). She played a major role in the television movie Christmas Belle (2013).

In 2016, Wilson began performing in the role of Miss Daisy Werthan in the Neil Simon Film Festival's Driving Miss Daisy opposite her former Walker, Texas Ranger co-star, Clarence Gilyard.