READER’S DIGESTAUGUST 2019 • 23harm children...” She shakes her
head, clearly shocked by how Dee
Dee tricked Gypsy Rose (played by
Joey King) into thinking she had
leukemia, asthma, brain damage
and muscular dystrophy. “We know
about physical abuse but medical
abuse is a very different thing.”
Arquette wanted to get at the
woman behind the monster and
found a way in when she saw
interview footage of Dee Dee in
prison. “She’d seem OK, then she’d
go into this fugue state and come
back from it, and I thought, S h e’s
seriously mentally ill. I came to the
conclusion that she was terrified
Gypsy would break away from her.”
When we first meet, Patricia is in
a hotel room in London dressed for
the unseasonably chilly weather inClockwise: Patricia as
Dee Dee Blanchard in
The Act; in Escape At
Dannemora; in
Boyhood—the
performance that won
her an Oscar