Daisy Lemay

Susan "Daisy" Lemay (born; Daisy Cooper, adoptive name; Susan Lemay) is a fictional character on CBS's daytime drama Guiding Light. The first-born child of Harley Cooper Aitoro and Dylan Shayne Lewis, she was born on-screen in 1987 when Harley was seventeen years old. Her birth mother later gave her up for adoption.

The character has been portrayed by three actresses with Bonnie Dennison most recently playing the role from January 10, 2007 to September 18, 2009. Previously, she was portrayed by Brittany Slattery from August 24 to October 30, 1989, and from March to April 1994, and by Brittany Snow from December 3, 1998 to March 19, 2001.

Character Information

Biography

Birth

Daisy was born to Dylan Lewis and Harley-Davidson Cooper in September 1987 when they were teenagers. Former high-school sweethearts, Dylan had left Harley long before she was due to give birth. Daisy was born on a stretch of highway when her mother and her uncle, Frank, got into a car accident with Alan-Michael Spaulding and Dinah Morgan as Frank was driving her to Cedars Hospital to give birth. Dinah helped Harley deliver the baby and provided support when she had to give up the baby whom she had named "Daisy", as she had planned. She was later renamed "Susan" by her adoptive parents, Jim and Connie Lemay.

Early life

When Dylan returned to Springfield in 1989 and learnt that Harley had given birth to his child, he and Samantha Marler posed as babysitters to get close to Daisy. This also allowed Harley to see her daughter, which led her then-husband, Alan-Michael Spaulding, to table a bid to buy Daisy back for Harley's sake. This offer was refused and Alan-Michael retaliated by revealing Dylan and Samantha's real identities to the Lemays. Harley's only connection to Daisy was severed and she nearly left Alan-Michael before he kidnapped her child; making plans to leave for Australia to start a new life with her and Harley. Harley refused and gave her baby back to the Lemays who subsequently moved away.

In 1994, Dylan received word of Daisy, now 8 years old, when Connie Lemay visited him and revealed that she needed him to donate part of his pancreas in order to help his daughter with a rare form of diabetes. The surgery was successful but to Dylan's heartbreak, the Lemays still refused to allow him to see Daisy.

When Connie died of cancer in 1998, Daisy ran away to Springfield to meet Harley. She quickly settled into life with her mother and her then-husband, Phillip Spaulding. Despite this, she plotted for Harley to enter into a union with Daisy's adoptive father, Jim Lemay. Her plan failed but it succeeded in bringing Jim to Springfield where he began to see Beth Raines. Daisy's constant battles with Beth resulted in Daisy being sent away to a disciplinary camp. When she returned, she went to San Cristobel for a family event and nearly died in a plane crash on the return trip to Springfield. Jim was able to save both her and Harley from the wreckage of the plane. Soon after, it was revealed that Beth was pregnant with Phillip's child, an event which strained her parents' credibility. She began to act up, and found herself involved in the distribution and sale of pirated CDs. After Jim died in a fire attempting to rescue Lizzie Spaulding and James Spaulding, Daisy continued to grow more and more emotionally distant from Harley, before being sent away to a boarding school for the performing arts. During this time, she became involved in bar hopping and dating much older men.

Teenage years

In 2007, she returned to Springfield with ne'er-do-well boyfriend G, a criminal for hire in tow. After G was responsible for the death of Daisy's cousin Tammy Layne Winslow, her stepfather Gus Aitoro discovered her passed out in G's car and locked her in a room at Towers in an attempt to sober her up. At Harley and Gus's hearing to adopt a baby named Sydney, Daisy broke down and confessed to her involvement with G. Her testimony was damning to the Aitoros' credibility as potential adoptive parents of the baby and they soon had to give up Sydney to her biological family. Blaming herself for the loss of Sydney, Daisy propositioned the opposition but Harley saved her and brought her home.

Harley and Daisy's relationship became more strained when miscommunication on both parties finally culminated in an event where Daisy was nearly sexually assaulted by a boy named Bobby. Harley didn't believe her daughter's story and put her in jail for a night for drugging Bobby so she could leave. Daisy refused to speak to her mother for weeks afterwards, begging her paternal grandparents to let her live with them but Harley disallowed it. Though she didn't get along with her mother, her stepfather Gus Aitoro won her heart when he proved that he understood her in a way no one did. She soon developed a crush on him. Harley and Daisy's relationship reached an all-time low when Harley slapped Daisy for claiming that her mother would've screwed up Sydney more than she already did Daisy. Furious, Harley pushed her daughter when she tried to leave and demanded some respect. Though Harley apologized, Daisy wasn't interested and walked out. She then worked to find a way to bring her father Dylan to Springfield. When Harley decided to send her to a boot camp when Daisy got into an accident with her brother, Zach, whilst driving Harley's car, Reva fiercely defended her but to no avail. Dylan returned home, however, just as Gus was driving her to the camp. When they made a pitstop for the night, she confessed her love for him but he gently let her down telling her that he was in love with her mother. This didn't faze Daisy, however, and she set out to bed him—by drugging Gus. Unfortunately, the candles she had lit only served to burn down their motel room and Daisy was forced to call an ambulance when Gus wouldn't wake up. Gus kept Daisy's secret and claimed that the fire was his fault claiming he had taken painkillers when he woke up. When Dylan voiced his concerns that his daughter was cavorting with a drug addict (which Gus had a past with), he became even more alarmed when he discovered Daisy's video blog where she confessed her love for her stepfather. This convinced Dylan that Gus was also a sexual predator. The truth was revealed, however, when Daisy was forced to confess when Gus told Harley about her feelings for him which led them to figure out that Daisy had drugged Gus. While she was in Juvenile detention she met Rafe who turned out to be Gus's son. Daisy fell in love with Rafe and they started dating. On October 2, 2007 Daisy found out she was pregnant and Rafe was the father. She chose to have an abortion without telling Rafe that she was pregnant. When he found out what she had done, he chose to sever the ties between them. The October 15, 2007 episode had Reva come in and comfort Daisy right after, and on December 24, 2007 episode where many of the Springfielders were locked in the mall showed Ashlee, Lizzie and Daisy together and a reference was made by Daisy that she had an abortion.

With her mother, Harley, living in Greece with her brothers Zach and Jude and her dad, Dylan, living in Michigan, reconciling with his ex-wife, Bridget Reardon, Daisy has found herself re-involved with ex-boyfriend, G, who turned out to be Cyrus's brother, Grady. Daisy was dating James Spaulding when the show went off air in September.

External links

• Daisy Lemay's profile page at Soap Opera Central
• Bonnie Dennison's biography at CBS Daytime