He was the oldest man and the first actor to enter the White House. But Ronald Reagan will go down in history as the President with popular appeal at home and abroad.

THEY were dark days for the United States. The economy was in recession, the Cold War was its most tense since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the nation had just been humiliated by the hapless attempt to free hostages at the US embassy in Tehran.

Almost in despair, America turned to Ronald Reagan, the B-movie star turned politician.

His crushing defeat of Jimmy Carter in 1980 meant that, at 69, Reagan became the oldest man to be elected President.

There were concerns he would adopt an ultra-conservative agenda of free market economics and anti-communism which would bring about conflict at home and abroad.

However, when he left office in January 1989, just a few days short of his 78th birthday, he had seen the deaths of three Soviet leaders and began an intriguing relationship with a new generation in the Kremlin which was about to lead to the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War.

He said farewell to the White House as the most popular White House incumbent since Franklin Roosevelt.

When he entered office, Soviet-US relations were in a parlous state, Reagan became known, because of his movie career, as the "Cowboy President" eager for a showdown with the Kremlin. He famously referred to Russia as an "empire of evil".

Sometimes he alarmed his allies by the ferocity of his anti-communist rhetoric, though he softened his position during the 1984 re-election campaign, and succeeded in dividing Americans over his hard-line approach towards Marxist Cuba and Nicaragua.

It was a bumpy relationship with the much younger Mikhail Gorbachev, that had its highs and lows. And Reagan's presidency was punctuated by crises in foreign policy - but with successes in his dealings with Congress on domestic issues.

His was very much a hands-off approach to government. Senior members of Congress summoned to the Oval Office on important matters of state complained that, when they went to see Reagan, he preferred to regale them with jokes and stories rather than discuss substantive matters.

His light-hearted approach didn't always succeed. In 1984 he was being tested for voice level before going on a radio programme. In this test he jokingly said he had signed a bill outlawing Russia, adding: "The bombing begins in five minutes". He did not realise the microphones were switched on.

But his humour shone through even on the bleakest occasions.On March 30, 1981, at the age of 70, he was shot in an assassination attempt by a young drifter, John Hinckley.

The bullet entered his left side, bounced off his seventh rib, punctured and collapsed a lung, and lodged an inch from his heart.

Reagan charmed Americans with his good humour during what was a frightening ordeal. When the injured President was sped to hospital, he joked to his wife Nancy: "Honey, I forgot to duck." Astonishingly, he was back in the White House 12 days after the shooting.

And although he was attacked by his critics as being "dim and dumb", Reagan was actually a quick-witted individual and a leader, unafraid to take swift and tough decisions, a man who scorned detail but wielded the broad brush with masterly effect.

But the old showbusiness side of him never deserted Reagan, with his homespun, often sentimental quotes and genuinely genial nature. His goal, he said, was to make the United States "walk tall" abroad. Another time he said: "You ain't seen nothing yet." And the Americans loved him for it.

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in a rented apartment above a bakery in Tampico, Illinois on February 6, 1911. His father, an itinerant salesman and a heavy drinker, took one look at his bawling child and said: "For such a little bit of a fat Dutchman, he makes a hell of a lot of noise."

The nickname "Dutch" stuck. He lived in various Illinois communities, with his father barely able to eke out a living for his wife and two sons.

Reagan was said to be an average-to-good student, but his studies competed with his extra-curricular activities, such as sports and school plays. He graduated from Eureka (Illinois) College in 1932 and for the next five years worked as a radio broadcaster, announcing baseball and football games throughout the Midwest.

Reagan then moved to Hollywood and switched to acting for nearly the next 30 years (1937 to 1965), playing the lead in B-pictures and supporting roles in A-movies. His 51 pictures included Love is on the Air, Sergeant Murphy, Brother Rat, Dark Victory, Hell's Kitchen, Knute Rockne - All American, Kings Row, That Hagen girl, The Girl from Jones Beach, The Winning Team, and Bedtime for Bonzo - in which he played second string to a chimpanzee.

When he was 28, in 1940, he married film star Jane Wyman, 26, at the Wee Kirk o'Heather wedding chapel near Hollywood. The two eventually separated, reconciled briefly, and in May, 1948, separated permanently. They had a daughter, Maureen, and adopted a son, Michael.

Reagan thus became the first President to have been divorced. In 1952, at the age of 41, Reagan married Nancy Davis, 30, whom he also met in Hollywood and who was to become the First Lady. This marriage produced another daughter, Patricia Ann, and a son, Ronald.

In the role of First Lady she was active in the administration and, it was disclosed after he left office, that she had arranged his daily schedule on the advice of a San Francisco astrologer - a practice that would have alarmed the world if it had been known at the time.

In 1950, when still a Democrat he campaigned against Richard Nixon in his bid for the US Senate. Ten years later he switched to the Republican cause and was delivering speeches for Nixon.

He ran for and won the governorship of California in 1967, an office he held until 1975.

But after unsuccessful bids for the Republican presidential nomination in both 1968 and 1976, he secured the nomination in 1980. Jimmy Carter was feeble and vulnerable because of the Iranian hostage crisis and a terrible economy.

Reagan thus swept in by a landslide. Four years later, Reagan was to win again, with the largest number of electoral votes in history.

As part of his economics programme, he drastically reduced the taxes of the wealthy in a bid to stimulate spending and investment, and he simultaneously cut money in programmes for the poor, the aged, the environment and national parks. Yet, he saw his country emerge from its worst recession since the Second World War.

During his tenure of office, in 1983, the Soviets broke off arms control talks after Nato began deploying US-Pershing-2 and Cruise missiles in Western Europe. But they were soon reinstated.

And he and Gorbachev, in 1987, ultimately signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in which both countries agreed to destroy hundreds of medium- and short-range missiles.

Throughout his presidency, global terrorism increased, and although his Government took a strong public "no negotiation" position, the White House secretly negotiated with terrorists, selling them high-tech weaponry in exchange for concessions, and thus even abetting further terrorist acts.

Towards the end of his presidency, much of the momentum was stalled by the ongoing Iran-Contra scandals, which revealed the White House's complex system of selling arms to Iranian-backed terrorists, and diverting the profits to illegally aid rebel forces, the ''Contras'' in Nicaragua.

More than once doubts were expressed about his ability or willingness to absorb the details of complex problems.

But while his administration was tainted by the Iran-Contra scandals, he was not.

Although he struggled with detail, he was a superbly instinctive politician. His home-spun philosophy enabled him to capture the hearts and minds of middle America with a charm that assured him of affection during his eight years in office and his latter years in retirement and ill-health.