Sideshow: Dickinson on her autistic daughter

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Posted on Wed, Sep. 1, 2010

Sideshow: Dickinson on her autistic daughter

By Tirdad Derakhshani

Inquirer Staff Writer

Dressed to Kill star Angie Dickinson , 78, writes about her daughter's autism in

an essay in Los Angeles magazine, excerpted by Newsweek.

Troubles for Nikki Bacharach, Dickinson's daughter with composer Burt Bacharach,

began early: She was born three months premature in the summer of 1966, weighing

only one pound, 10 ounces. She was placed in a preemie isolette and was not

allowed to be touched - a bad move for any baby, Dickinson notes.

" Even the doctors back then didn't know the value of touch, " she writes, " that

if you never get touched or hear a loving voice or get held in those first

months, you won't ever feel real or feel connected to anything. "

Nikki, the essay says, didn't speak until she was 3, but " could play piano like

a prodigy " at 4. Nikki, who spent more than a decade in a psychiatric treatment

center, committed suicide in '07.