Patrick John Morrison was born in Los Angeles, California on July 15, 1939, as the second child to John Wayne (1907–1979), an actor, and his first wife, Josephine Alicia (née Saenz; 1908–2003), the daughter of Panama's Consul General to the United States.

[1] Wayne attended Loyola Marymount University, where he was a member of the Alpha Delta Gamma fraternity.

[14] Wayne made his debut at the age of 11, as an uncredited extra in the romantic Western film Rio Grande (1950).

He went on to appear in 10 more film with his father, John Wayne; The Quiet Man (1952), The High and the Mighty (1954) - as a props assistant, The Conqueror (1956), The Searchers (1956), The Alamo (1960), The Comancheros (1961), Donovan's Reef (1963), McLintock!

[15] He appeared in several films directed by John Ford: The Sun Shines Bright (1952), The Long Gray Line (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), and The Searchers (1956).

His television work included the baseball teleplay Rookie of the Year (1955), directed by Ford and starring his father, and Flashing Spikes (1962), a baseball television anthology installment directed by Ford and starring James Stewart, with his father in an extended cameo role.

Wayne peaked as an actor in the late 1970s in the popular matinee fantasy Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), then in The People That Time Forgot (1977).

Wayne had many appearances on popular television series of the 1970s and 1980s, including Charlie's Angels (1976), Fantasy Island (1978), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Sledge Hammer!