American actress who became a film starlet in 1954 in B movies. She had her first big break with “Rio Bravo” in 1959. Dickinson became a TV favorite with her series “Police Woman,” 1974-1978. TV was her best medium, with better made-for-TV-movies for the most part than the roles she was given on the big screen. Dressed to Kill,” 1980, was an exception as a tense thriller.
Dickinson spent a hard childhood watching her newspaper editor dad, Leo, battle alcoholism and her strong-willed mom, Frederica, struggle to raise her and her two sisters. In 1942 she moved to California where she worked as a secretary and had a short-lived marriage to college football player Gene Dickinson. Winning a beauty-pageant propelled her into acting and into some well publicized affairs with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson and eventually, composer Burt Bacharach. Dickinson married Bacharach in 1965 and blamed herself and the long hours she spent on the set of “Police Woman” for their separation in 1976. They divorced in 1981 and remain on speaking terms. Their daughter, Lea Nikki, was born three months premature and weighed 29 ounces. Though barely surviving her birth, Nikki is a geology grad student and drummer who has impaired vision.
Still gorgeous at 64, Dickinson recently separated from a beau who is nearly 37 years younger, Scottish music-stage actor John Barrowman.
In May 1993 Dickinson was in Oliver Stone’s TV miniseries “Wild Palms” and in October of that year played a spa operator in the film “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.”
Her 40-year-old daughter Nikki, who suffered from Asberger’s Disorder, committed suicide on January 4, 2007 at her Thousand Oaks, CA home by suffocating herself with a plastic bag and helium.
Link to Wikipedia biography