New York: Criticised by his detractors as glib and uninformed person with nothing more than a winning smile, America's first movie-star President Ronald Reagan was loved by Americans and has been described as the most successful conservative of the modern times.

Both his domestic and foreign policies were full of contradiction but still the two-term President left a legacy which his fellow countrymen would find it difficult to forget.

His sense of humour often came to his rescue and while interacting with newsmen was known to hear only the questions he wanted to hear.

His Presidency saw several missteps and political wrongdoings but that did not affect his reputation and he left the White House as one of the most popular Presidents.

Iran-Contra scandal, which involved secretly selling arms to Iran to win freedom of US hostages in Lebanon and fund Contras in Nicaragua, dogged his Presidency and his decision to send Marines as a part of the peacekeeping force in Lebanon in October 1983 came in for strong criticism after a terrorist bombing killed 241 of them.

He came to power vowing to cut taxes and reduce Government spending but when he left nothing much had changed.

He came to office calling the Soviet Communism as "the focus of evil in the modern world" but held four summits with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. They almost reached a deal for elimination of all nuclear weapons at their summit Iceland in 1986 but it failed when Gorbachev insisted that the United States stop research in the missile defense system, which is popularly known as "Star Wars".

But in 1987, they signed a far-reaching deal to eliminate 2,600 warheads on which the two sides have been building ever since.

However, his policies are credited with hastening the demise of the Soviet Union.

The aim of "Star Wars" was to deflect incoming missiles but the programme was deemed too expensive and risky and was put on hold till it was recently resurrected by President George Bush.

In fact, analysts say the current President Bush's policies are more inspired by Reagan than his own father.

While he was advocating tax cuts, the actor-turned-politician ordered a massive Defence build-up against the Soviet Union which meant huge spending by the Pentagon and was dubbed by critics as "corporate welfare".

Reagan's Presidency began on highly positive note with Iranians releasing American hostages and some said it was because they were afraid of his "cowboy" stance, But within a few months, his Presidency almost ended when a deranged drifter shot him as he left a hotel in Washington after giving a speech.

The bullet lodged with a few inches of heart. "Honey, I forgot to duck," he remarked to his wife Nancy when he came out from surgery. It was a line made famous by boxer Jack Dempsey when he lost the heavyweight title in 1926. As he entered the surgery, he told surgeons, "Please tell me you're Republicans."