At age 15, Duke portrayed Helen Keller in the film The Miracle Worker (1962), a role she had originated on Broadway.

[5] Duke spent her early life in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens,[2] where her brother Raymond, her sister Carol, and she experienced a difficult childhood.

When Duke was eight, her care was turned over to talent managers John and Ethel Ross who, after promoting Patty's brother, were looking for a girl to add to their stable of child actors.

In 1959, at the age of 12, Duke was a contestant on The $64,000 Question and won $32,000; her category of expertise, according to her autobiography Call Me Anna, was popular music.

Duke eventually testified before congressional investigators and broke into tears when she admitted she had been coached to speak falsely.

[13] Also in 1959, Duke appeared in a television adaptation of Meet Me in St. Louis as Tootie Smith, the role that had originated in the film version by Margaret O'Brien.

[14] During the run, Duke's name was elevated above the play's title on the theater's billboard, believed to be the first time this had been done for such a young star.

William Schallert portrayed Patty's father, Martin, and his twin brother, Kenneth, Cathy's father; Jean Byron played her mother, Natalie; Paul O'Keefe was her younger brother, Ross; and Eddie Applegate portrayed her boyfriend, Richard Harrison (though the actor was more than a decade older than Duke).

[15] The show also featured such high-profile guest stars as Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Paul Lynde, and Sal Mineo.

[16] The film was a box-office success, but audiences and critics had a difficult time accepting all-American-teenager Duke as an alcoholic, drug-addicted singing star.

In 1969, Duke starred in Me, Natalie, in which she played an "ugly duckling" Brooklyn teenager struggling to make a life for herself in the Bohemian world of Greenwich Village.

The ABC sitcom It Takes Two, from Soap and Benson creator Susan Harris, was cancelled after one season; Hail to the Chief, in which she appeared as the first female President of the United States;[15] and a comedy, Karen's Song, which aired on the fledgling Fox network.

[23] Duke's film roles in the 1980s included the Canadian film By Design (1981), which garnered her a Genie Award nomination for Best Foreign Actress, and the made-for-TV movie A Time to Triumph (1986), the true story of Concetta Hassan, a woman who struggles to support her family after her husband is injured, but who eventually becomes a United States Army helicopter pilot.

In 1992, Duke portrayed the mother of Meg Ryan's character in the film adaptation of the play Prelude to a Kiss.

[16] Her tenure as president was marked by factional in-fighting and controversy; however, she gained respect for managing to maintain solidarity among the guild's members.

[24] Duke gradually reduced her work schedule in the 2000s but took occasional TV roles, including guest appearances on shows such as Glee[25] and the reboot of Hawaii Five-0.

[28] In May 2011, Duke directed the stage version of The Miracle Worker at the now defunct Interplayers Theater in Spokane, Washington.

[30] In 2015, Duke made her final TV appearance, guest-starring on Liv and Maddie as Grandma Janice and Great-aunt Hilary, a pair of identical twins.

[33] In 1987, Duke revealed in her autobiography that she had been diagnosed with manic depression (now called bipolar disorder) in 1982, becoming one of the first public figures to speak out about her personal experience of mental illness.

[35] The third, In The Presence of Greatness—My Sixty Year Journey as an Actress (ISBN 9781629332352) (with William J. Jankowski), published posthumously in February 2018, is a collection of essays about her experiences with other artists and celebrities.

[38] On December 14, 2007, her 61st birthday, Duke was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters degree from the University of North Florida for her work in advancing awareness of mental health issues.

[41][42] In her later life, she studied a number of different religions, commenting in 1995: "To suggest that one must spout Moses or Jesus or Buddha or chant like Tibetan monks in order to be religious, I believe, is not to walk in the path of Christ...

[6] In early 1970, at age 23, Duke became involved with three men at the same time: 17-year-old Here's Lucy star Desi Arnaz Jr.,[6] actor John Astin (who was 16 years her senior), and rock music promoter Michael Tell.

[43] Duke wrote in her 1987 autobiography that the marriage to Tell was never consummated, and that Astin was Sean's biological father, emphasizing those two assertions in several parts of the book.

[49] Duke died on the morning of March 29, 2016[50] in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, of sepsis from a ruptured intestine at the age of 69.

[51] Her son Sean Astin invited the public to contribute to a mental-health foundation in his mother's name, the Patty Duke Mental Health Initiative.