Text by ANTHONY McCARTNEY The AP Entertainment Writer Ryan O’Neal died Friday. He was a star actor who went from a TV soap opera to an Oscar nomination for “Love Story” and gave a wry performance in “Paper Moon” opposite his charming 9-year-old daughter Tatum.
TV host Patrick O’Neal of Los Angeles wrote on Instagram, “My dad died peacefully today, with his loving team by his side, supporting him and loving him as he would have us.”
There was no word on what caused the death. Ryan O’Neal was first told he had chronic leukaemia in 2006, and then he was told he had prostate cancer in 2012. He was 82 years old.
“My father, Ryan O’Neal, has always been my hero,” Patrick O’Neal wrote. “He is a legend in Hollywood.” End of sentence.”
“I loved him very much.” This is what Tatum O’Neal told People magazine: “I loved him very much and know he loved me too.” “I will always miss him. I’m thankful that we were able to part ways on good terms.
Between 1970 and 1980, Ryan O’Neal was one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He worked with many of the most famous directors of the time, such as Peter Bogdanovich on “Paper Moon” and “What’s Up, Doc?” and Stanley Kubrick on “Barry Lyndon.” He often played guys with dark or scary backgrounds behind their clean-cut looks, using his boyish, blonde good looks.
In the 2010s, O’Neal kept up a steady acting job on TV into his 70s, with roles on “Bones” and “Desperate Housewives.” However, his public relationship with Farrah Fawcett and his troubled family life kept him in the news.
O’Neal was married to Fawcett for almost 30 years and had a son named Redmond with her in 1985. He has been divorced twice. They broke up in 1997 but got back together a few years later. He was by Fawcett’s side as she fought cancer, which took her life in 2009 at age 62.
Gryphon O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal were born to O’Neal and his first wife, Joanna Moore. Tatum O’Neal won an Oscar for best supporting actress in the 1973 movie “Paper Moon,” which starred O’Neal. His second wife, Leigh Taylor-Young, gave birth to a son named Patrick.
Ryan O’Neal was nominated for an Oscar for best actor in the 1970 movie “Love Story,” which starred Ali MacGraw and was about a young couple who fall in love, get married, and then find out she has cancer and is dying. The famous line from the movie that is often made fun of is “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
The actor had tense relationships with three of his children at times. He lost touch with his daughter, got into fights with his son Gryphon, and was arrested for drugs after his son Redmond’s probation check. His later work was often overshadowed by his personal problems, though his short-lived reality show about trying to get back together with Tatum O’Neal was interesting.
Before getting a lead role on the prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place” (1964–1969), O’Neal had small roles and did some action work. The show also made Mia Farrow a star.
From there, O’Neal moved on to films with “The Big Bounce,” which came out in 1969 and co-starred his then-wife Taylor-Young. But “Love Story” made him famous.
The love melodrama was the most successful movie of 1970, making it one of Paramount Pictures’ biggest hits. It was nominated for seven Oscars, including one for best picture. It got the award for best music.
After “Love Story” made him a big star, O’Neal was considered for almost every big lead part in Hollywood. Paramount even tried to get him to play Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” but Francis Ford Coppola insisted that Al Pacino get the part.
After that, O’Neal played a mess-up doctor opposite Barbra Streisand in Bogdanovich’s screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” in 1972.
There was a lot of sadness in Streisand’s Instagram post when she heard that Ryan O’Neal had died. She and O’Neal were both in the 1979 boxing romance “The Main Event.” “People will remember how funny and nice he was.”
The following year, “What’s Up, Doc?” Bogdanovich put him in “Paper Moon,” a comedy about a con artist during the Great Depression.
In it, O’Neal played a shady Bible salesman who took advantage of women he found through death notices. Tatum, his real-life daughter, played an orphan who talks trash and smokes cigarettes and needs his help. She ends up saving his life.
Even though both artists got good reviews, the girl’s cocky performance stole the show and made her the youngest person ever to win a competitive Academy Award. In 1974, she was 10 years old when the award was given. Oscars have been given to younger artists like Shirley Temple.
“Barry Lyndon,” Kubrick’s 18th-century epic, was the next big movie for the older O’Neal. He played a poor Irish rogue who travelled Europe pretending to be an aristocrat.
But making the three-hour movie was boring, and Kubrick’s need to be perfect caused a split between him and the actor that never went away.
After that, O’Neal worked with Tatum again in Bogdanovich’s early Hollywood comedy “Nickelodeon” (1976). The movie didn’t do well, though, and they never worked together again. The 1978 follow-up “Oliver’s Story,” which tried to cash in on his “Love Story” character Oliver Barrett, failed miserably.
Tatum and his daughter grew apart as he got older. Ryan Tatum found out about his daughter’s marriage to tennis star John McEnroe through a late letter. They were together, and O’Neal wrote about it in a book that came out in 2012.
“A door inside me locked the morning the telegram came, and I am still searching blindly for the key to open it,” O’Neal wrote in “Both of Us.”
During the 1980s, O’Neal’s work slowed down even more. The emerald heist drama “Green Ice” (1981) and the comedy “Irreconcilable Differences” (1984), in which he played a busy dad in a bad marriage whose daughter (played by 9-year-old Drew Barrymore) tries to get a divorce, were both releases.
Another bad time in O’Neal’s life was the decade. Gryphon Coppola had many run-ins with the law. In 1986, he was involved in a boating accident in Maryland that killed Gian-Carlo Coppola, 23, who was the son of movie director Francis Ford Coppola. Gryphon O’Neal was found guilty of running a boat carelessly and negligently. He was given a community service sentence and later spent a short time in jail because of it.
As Ryan O’Neal’s fame in Hollywood dropped, he started to appear in TV films. He finally returned to regular TV with Fawcett in the 1991 sitcom ‘Good Sports’, but the show only lasted one season.
Both agreed that the work made things harder between them.
In 1991, O’Neal said, “We get into fights.” “She’s strong. She wants to be taken care of well. When you’re trying to make a moment and are pressed for time, on a set that can get lost.
In 1989, the movie “Chances Are” marked the start of O’Neal taking on more supporting parts. His second job was as a character actor. In “Faithful” (1996), he played a husband who hires a hitman to kill his wife, and in “Zero Effect,” he played a mysterious businessman.
His relationship with Fawcett had ended by that time, but they stayed close and finally got back together in the 2000s. The volatile O’Neal family factors, on the other hand, that had made their relationship hard before were still there.
In 2007, the older O’Neal was arrested for allegedly hitting Gryphon and firing a gun during a fight, but no charges were ever brought. Their son Redmond was caught and jailed many times and had to go to rehab for years as ordered by the court.
Redmond O’Neal was arrested for having drugs in September 2008 at his father’s home in Malibu during a probation check. Ryan O’Neal admitted to the crime and started a programme to help people who use drugs, but he openly denied that the drugs were his. He said that he took them away from his son to keep him safe.
His father was a screenwriter named Charles O’Neal and his mother was an actress named Patricia Callaghan O’Neal. He was born on April 20, 1941. Before he found his calling as a performer, O’Neal worked as a lifeguard and as an amateur boxer.
