Ryan O’Neal, the heartthrob actor who played an Oscar-nominated role in the TV soap opera “Love Story” and delivered a powerful performance alongside his charismatic 9-year-old daughter Tatum in “Paper Moon,” died Friday. Gone, said his son.
“My dad passed away peacefully today, supported and loved by his loving team as he would us,” Los Angeles sportscaster Patrick O’Neill posted on Instagram.
No cause of death was given. Ryan O’Neal was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012, a decade after he was diagnosed with chronic leukemia. He was 82 years old.
“My dad, Ryan O’Neal, has always been my hero,” wrote Patrick O’Neal, “He’s a Hollywood legend. Full stop.”
“He meant the world to me. I loved him so much and know he loved me too,” Tatum O’Neal told People magazine in a statement. “I will miss him forever. And I feel very fortunate that we ended up on such good terms.
Ryan O’Neal was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1970s, working with many of the era’s most famous directors in genres including Peter Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon” and “What’s Up, Doc?” and Stanley Kubrick on “Barry Linden.” He often used his boyish, blond good looks to portray men who hid shadowy or sinister backgrounds behind their clean-cut images.
O’Neal maintained a steady television acting career well into his 70s in the 2010s, appearing on “Bones” and “Desperate Housewives,” but his longtime relationship with Farrah Fawcett and his His tumultuous family life kept him in the news.
Twice divorced, O’Neal was romantically involved with Fawcett for nearly 30 years, and they had a son, Redmond, born in 1985. The couple separated in 1997, but reunited a few years later. He stayed by Fawcett’s side as she battled cancer, which took her life in 2009 at the age of 62.
With his first wife, Joanna Moore, O’Neal fathered actors Griffin O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal, his co-star in the 1973 film “Paper Moon,” for which he won Best Supporting Actress. won the Oscar. He had a son Patrick with his second wife Lee Taylor Young.
Ryan O’Neal had his best actor Oscar nomination for the 1970 tearjerker “Love Story,” co-starring Ali McGrath, about a young couple who fall in love, marry. and discovers that she is dying of cancer. The film includes the memorable, but often satirical line: “Love doesn’t mean you’re sorry.”
The actor has had a strained relationship with his three children at times, including an estrangement from his daughter, a feud with son Griffin, and a drug-related arrest stemming from his son Redmond’s probation check. Personal drama often overshadowed her later career, though her reconciliation efforts with Tatum O’Neal were turned into a short-lived reality series.
O’Neal played bit parts and did some stunt work before claiming the lead role in the primetime soap opera “Peyton Place” (1964-69), which also starred Mia Farrow.
From there O’Neal made the leap to the big screen with 1969’s “The Big Bounce,” starring his then-wife, Taylor Young. But it was the “love story” that made him a movie star.
The romantic melodrama was the highest-grossing film of 1970, becoming one of Paramount Pictures’ biggest hits and earning seven Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. It won for Best Music.
After “Love Story” made him a major movie star, O’Neal was considered for seemingly every major role in Hollywood. Paramount even pushed him to play Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” before Al Pacino got the part at the insistence of director Francis Ford Coppola.
O’Neal then directed Bogdanovich in the 1972 screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” I starred opposite Barbra Streisand as a booming professor.
“So sad to hear of the passing of Ryan O’Neal,” Streisand, who also starred opposite O’Neal in the 1979 boxing rom-com “The Main Event,” posted on Instagram. “He was funny and charming, and he will be missed.”
“What’s going on, doctor?” A year later, Bogdanovich cast him in the Depression-era con artist comedy “Paper Moon.”
In it, O’Neal played an unscrupulous Bible salesman who preys on widows and is tracked down by death notices. His real-life daughter, Tatum, plays a trash-talking, chain-smoking orphan who needs his help — and eventually helps redeem him.
Although critics praised both actors, the little girl’s performance overshadowed her father and made her the youngest person in history to win a competitive Academy Award. She was 10 years old when the award was presented in 1974.
The elder O’Neal’s next big film was Kubrick’s 18th-century epic “Barry Lyndon,” in which he played a poor Irish scoundrel who travels to Europe to pass himself off as an aristocrat. was trying
However, filming the three-hour film was exhausting work, and Kubrick’s notorious perfectionism caused a rift between him and the actor that never healed.
O’Neal then reteamed with Tatum in Bogdanovich’s early Hollywood comedy “Nickelodeon” (1976). But the film was a flop and they never worked together again. An attempt to capitalize on his “Love Story” character, Oliver Barrett, with the sequel “Oliver’s Story” (1978) resulted in another flop.
Father and daughter became estranged as Tatum grew up, with the older actor learning belatedly of his daughter’s marriage to tennis great John McEnroe via telegram, Ryan O’Neill recounted his relationship with Fawcett in a 2012 book. I wrote
O’Neill wrote in “Both of Us,” “The morning the telegram came, a door was locked inside me, and I’m still blindly searching for the key to open it.”
O’Neal’s career took off further in the 1980s with the emerald heist drama “Green Ice” (1981) and the 1984 comedy “Irreconcilable Differences,” in which he played a busy father in an unhappy marriage. Betty, 9-year-old Drew Barrymore, tries to divorce her parents.
The decade was also a low point in O’Neal’s personal life. Her son Griffin had several brushes with the law, including a 1986 boating accident in Maryland that killed 23-year-old Giancarlo Coppola, son of film director Francis Ford Coppola. Griffin O’Neal was convicted of careless and negligent operation of a boat, sentenced to community service and later served a short prison term as a result.
With his Hollywood status on the wane, Ryan O’Neal began appearing in TV movies and eventually returned to series television with the 1991 sitcom “Good Sports” opposite then-boyfriend Fawcett, but it The show only ran for one season.
Both admitted that the job strained their relationship.
“We get into fights,” O’Neal said in 1991. “He’s tough. He’s expected to be treated well. On a set that can get lost when you’re trying to create a moment and you’re fighting the clock.”
O’Neal began accepting more supporting roles with the 1989 film “Chances Are.” He began a second career as a character actor, playing a husband who hires a hitman to kill his wife in “Faithful” (1996) and the blackmail comedy “Zero Effect.” (1998) in a mysterious tycoon.
By then her relationship with Fawcett had ended, although they remained close and eventually rekindled their romance in the 2000s. The volatile O’Neal family dynamic that previously taxed their relationship, however, remains.
The elder O’Neal was arrested in 2007 for allegedly assaulting and brandishing a weapon in an altercation with Griffin, but charges were never pursued. Their son Redmond was repeatedly arrested, sent to prison and spent several years in court-ordered rehab.
In September 2008, a probation check on Redmond O’Neill at his father’s Malibu home resulted in the actor’s arrest for possession of methamphetamine. Ryan O’Neal pleaded guilty to the charge and entered a drug diversion program, but he publicly denied the drugs were his. He said he took them away from his son and is trying to protect him.
Charles Patrick Ryan O’Neal was born on April 20, 1941, and was the son of screenwriter Charles O’Neal and actress Patricia Callaghan O’Neal. O’Neal spent time as a lifeguard and an amateur boxer before finding his calling as an actor.
