Patti Davis

Diagnoses

Personal

Vocation

Notable

Traits

Family

American writer and noted family, the daughter of Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Davis. With a strong ego-drive to find her own place, she dropped out of college against her parents' wishes, and participated in protests and demonstrations even while her father railed against them. She worked for a while as a singer and songwriter, then an actress on TV. She became hooked on drugs and stopped talking to her parents, splitting off from them entirely. She went through detoxification and began participating in liberal political campaigns, rebelling against her father's conservative policies. She wrote her first autobiographical novel "Home Front," 1986. With notorious ill-will toward her parents, she went on with her career of family-bashing with three more thinly veiled semi-autobiographical novels and another autobiography, "The Way I See It." By February 1994, she was conducting seminars on the dysfunctional family for $39 a head. She related that her mom beat her and popped prescription pills and her dad abandoned her emotionally, as he was selfish and remote. Davis had a nervous breakdown in 1981 when her dad was elected President as she could not cope with all the complex pressures and conflicts. She married her yoga instructor, Paul Grilley on 8/14/1984; divorced 1990. She married Paul Hayeland, 27, on 11/20/1993, Westport, CT. In January, 1990 she had cosmetic surgery with an upper face lift (forehead.) Proud of a body toned by running, kick-boxing and weight training, Davis posed nude for the 7/1994 "Playboy," and also made a nude "Playboy" video of kick boxing in a gym with a young man, released in early 1995, when she was 43. With her release in May 1995 of "Angel's Don't Die: My Father's Gift of Faith," Davis showed that had mellowed somewhat and was perhaps even on the road to forgiving her parents. As her dad's Alzheimer's progressed, she seemed to reconcile with them, at least on the surface. In 2003 she wrote a loving introduction to the book, "The President and Mrs. Reagan: An American Love Story," and she spoke eloquently of her father at his funeral. Link to Wikipedia biography