Photo:Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage
Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage
Ryan O’Neal, the iconic actor who was Oscar-nominated for his role in the 1970 romanceLove Storyhas died. He was 82.
His son Patrick O’Neal wrote in an Instagramtributethat his father — who had been diagnosed with chronic leukemia in 2001 and with prostate cancer in 2012 — “passed away peacefully” Dec. 8, calling him “a Hollywood legend.”
Born in Los Angeles on April 20, 1941, to screenwriter Charles O’Neal, and Patricia, an actress, O’Neal broke out in the soap operaPeyton Placein 1964. He went on to lead hit films including Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 comedyWhat’s Up, Doc?oppositeBarbra Streisand.
In 1973, he joined his then pre-teen daughterTatum O’NealinPaper Moon, which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
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O’Neal expressed more than once he didn’t consider himself the greatest talent onscreen. Of his most famous role,Love Story’s preppy Harvard student Oliver Barrett in, he once said, “I didn’t worry about whether I was preparing enough for the part. I’m not into study and research much. I made sure I looked right — you know, the right scarf, the right sweater.”
While the golden boy look immortalized in that movie made him famous, it was his turbulent life off screen that made lasting headlines. As his son Griffin once told PEOPLE: “The O’Neal family is as talented as hell but we’re as screwed up as a soup sandwich.”
Ryan O’Neal, Joanna Moore and daughter Tatum O’Neal in 1964.Disney General Entertainment Content/getty
Disney General Entertainment Content/getty
As a kid, O’Neal had a taste for adventure and trouble. By the time he was a teenager, he once said, “I knew life was a kick and part of the fun, I guess, was getting into a lot of fights.”
O’Neal then marriedPeyton Placecostar Taylor-Young in 1967 — the day after he finalized his divorce from Moore.
Other than his onscreen reunion with Streisand in 1979’sThe Main Event, O’Neal experienced a string of box office disappointments — but he had other pursuits. In 1979, his friend,Six Million Dollar ManstarLee Majors, asked O’Neal (who had since divorced Taylor-Young) to look after his wife, Fawcett. While Majors was away on a film shoot, O’Neal and Fawcett went on a date, which he described to theL.A. Times: “We sat and kissed and kissed until our lips were bloody.”
O’Neal and Fawcett would go on to have blowout fights, however. In the middle of one violent episode, Redmond, then six, allegedly threatened to hurt himself with a butcher knife unless they stopped fighting, a scene which O’Neal described in his 2012 memoirBoth of Us: My Life With Farrah.
Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett.Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
After a split in 1997 O’Neal and Fawcett remained friends, and in 2001 rekindled their romance when he was diagnosed with leukemia at age 60. She moved back part time to his Malibu home and told PEOPLE in 1997: “Part of us will always be together.”
Five years later, he was at her side after she was diagnosed with anal cancer. “It’s a love story,” O’Neal said of their relationship in a 2009 interview withPEOPLE. “I just don’t know how to play this one. I won’t know this world without her.”
Ryan O’Neal in 2015.Matthew Simmons/Getty
Matthew Simmons/Getty
After years of estrangement, O’Nealreunitedwith his daughter Tatum. He said at the time that Fawcett’s death in 2009 played “a very big role” in their reconciliation.
“It was as if time stood still,” he told PEOPLE in 2010 of seeing her for the first time in years. “She’s so happy. This is a different person than I remember.”
“He told me he’s sorry,” shared Tatum at the time. “He’s all I have in terms of family, and I needed him in my life. My dad was absolutely everything to me.”
In his memoirBoth of Us, O’Neal wrote that the memory of histime with Fawcettwas what carried him through life’s toughest times. “I feel her sometimes,” O’Neal told PEOPLE. “It’s a nice feeling. It reminds me that I did have a life and a love… It went too fast, that’s all.”
source: people.com
