Ryan O’Neal:Star of “Love Story,” “Paper Moon,” and “Peyton Place,” actor Ryan O’Neal, passes away at the age of 82.
FILE: On Thursday, March 11, 2010, at the Los Angeles premiere of "The Runaways," actress Tatum O'Neal, left, and her father, actor Ryan O'Neal, pose together. Ryan O'Neal, who starred opposite his astute daughter Tatum in "Paper Moon" and received an Oscar nomination for the heartfelt "Love Story," passed away. Patrick, O'Neal's son, posted on Instagram that his father passed away on Friday, December 8, 2023. (AP Photo/File: Chris Pizzello)
By AP Entertainment Writer Anthony McCartney
According to his son, Ryan O’Neal, the handsome actor who rose from a TV soap opera to an Oscar nomination for “Love Story” and gave a funny performance in “Paper Moon” alongside his endearing 9-year-old daughter Tatum, passed away on Friday.
Los Angeles sportscaster Patrick O’Neal wrote on Instagram, “My dad passed away peacefully today, with his loving team by his side, supporting him and loving him as he would us.”
The cause of death was not stated. A decade after receiving his initial diagnosis of chronic leukemia, Ryan O’Neal was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012. He was eighty-two.
Patrick O’Neal wrote, “My father, Ryan O’Neal, has always been my hero. He is a Hollywood legend.” Complete halt.
“He intended to
In the 1970s, Ryan O’Neal was one of the most well-known movie stars in the world. He collaborated on a number of genre-spanning films with some of the most well-known directors of the time, such as Stanley Kubrick on “Barry Lyndon” and Peter Bogdanovich on “Paper Moon” and “What’s Up, Doc?” His boyish, blond good looks were often employed to play men whose polished appearances belied dark or sinister backgrounds.
In the 2010s, O’Neal continued to have a successful career in television acting well into his 70s. He made appearances on shows like “Bones” and “Desperate Housewives,” but his turbulent family life and long-standing relationship with Farrah Fawcett kept him in the public eye.
After going through two divorces, O’Neal had a romantic relationship with Fawcett for almost thirty years. In 1985, their son Redmond was born. The pair parted ways in 1997 but got back together a few years later. He stood by Fawcett’s side during her illness, which ultimately claimed her life in 2009 at the age of 62.
The actors Griffin O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal, who costarred with him in the 1973 film “Paper Moon” and for which Joanna Moore received an Oscar for best supporting actress, were born to O’Neal and his first wife. With Leigh Taylor-Young, his second wife, he had a son named Patrick.
In the 1970 heartbreaking drama “Love Story,” which costarred Ali MacGraw and told the story of a young couple who fall in love, get married, and then learn that the woman is dying of cancer, Ryan O’Neal received his own Oscar nomination for best actor. The film features the iconic, yet frequently parodied, quote, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
The actor occasionally had tense relationships with three of his kids: he was estranged from his daughter, had arguments with his son Griffin, and was arrested for drugs after his son Redmond’s probation was violated. Even though his attempts to make amends with Tatum O’Neal were turned into a brief reality series, his personal drama frequently overshadowed his later career.
Before landing a major role on the prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place” (1964–1969), which also helped make a star out of Mia Farrow, O’Neal had small roles and done some stunt work.
Following that, O’Neal made a big screen debut in 1969 with “The Big Bounce,” costarring Taylor-Young, his then-wife. However, “Love Story” is what catapulted him into stardom.
The romantic melodrama earned seven Oscar nominations, including one for best picture, and became the highest-grossing movie of 1970. It was also one of Paramount Pictures’ biggest hits. Best music was awarded to it.
Following his breakthrough performance in “Love Story,” O’Neal was given serious consideration for almost every prominent leading role in Hollywood. Even though director Francis Ford Coppola insisted that Al Pacino play Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” Paramount pushed for him to play the role.
Then, in the 1972 screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” starring opposite Barbra Streisand as an inept professor, O’Neal worked for Bogdanovich.
The late Streisand wrote on Instagram, “So sad to hear the news of Ryan O’Neal’s passing.” Streisand and O’Neal costarred in the 1979 boxing romantic comedy “The Main Event.” “He will always be remembered for his charm and sense of humor.”
The following year, “What’s Up, Doc?” He played a con artist in the Depression-era comedy “Paper Moon,” directed by Bogdanovich.
In it, O’Neal portrayed a dishonest Bible salesman who preyed on widows he discovered via obituary notices. Tatum, his real-life daughter, portrayed an orphan who smokes cigarettes and talks trash but needs his help in the end and helps him get his life back on track.
Both actors received high marks from critics, but the young girl’s audacious performance eclipsed her father’s, making her the youngest person to ever win a competitive Academy Award. In 1974, she was 10 years old when the award was given out. (Younger actors have won specific Oscars; Shirley Temple is one example.)
The 18th-century epic “Barry Lyndon,” directed by Stanley Kubrick, starred the elder O’Neal as a poor Irish outlaw who traveled Europe pretending to be an aristocrat.
Though it was laborious work, Kubrick’s infamous perfectionism caused a rift with the actor that never healed during the three-hour film’s filming.
After that, O’Neal and Tatum collaborated once more on Bogdanovich’s debut Hollywood comedy “Nickelodeon” (1976). However, the movie bombed, and they never collaborated again. Oliver Barrett, the protagonist of his “Love Story,” was the subject of a botched attempt to cash in on the sequel “Oliver’s Story” (1978).
As Tatum grew older, he and his daughter drifted apart; Ryan O’Neal wrote in a 2012 book about his relationship with Fawcett that the elder actor found out about his daughter’s marriage to tennis great John McEnroe through a belated telegram.
In “Both of Us,” O’Neal wrote, “A door inside me locked the morning the telegram came, and I am still blindly searching for the key to open it.”
With the emerald heist drama “Green Ice” (1981) and the comedy “Irreconcilable Differences” (1984), in which O’Neal portrayed a busy father in an unhappy marriage whose daughter, played by 9-year-old Drew Barrymore, attempts to divorce her parents, his career began to cool further in the 1980s.
In O’Neal’s personal life, the decade was also a low point. The son of film director Francis Ford Coppola, Gian-Carlo Coppola, 23, died in a boating accident in Maryland in 1986. Gian-Carlo Coppola’s father, Griffin, had multiple run-ins with the law. Griffin O’Neal was found guilty of operating a boat carelessly and recklessly. As a result, he was sentenced to community service and briefly went to jail.
As his star power in Hollywood waned, Ryan O’Neal started doing TV movie roles. Eventually, he made a comeback to series television, costarring opposite his then-lover Fawcett in the 1991 sitcom “Good Sports,” which ran for just one season.
They both admitted that their relationship suffered as a result of the work.
“We have fights,” O’Neal remarked in 1991. She is resilient. She anticipates receiving good care. On a set where it’s easy to lose focus when attempting to capture a moment while racing against the clock.
In 1989, O’Neal started taking on more supporting parts after the release of “Chances Are.” He started a second career as a character actor, appearing in the blackmail comedy “Zero Effect” (1998) as an enigmatic tycoon and “Faithful” (1996) as a husband who hires a hitman to kill his wife.
He was still close to Fawcett, and they later reignited their romance in the 2000s, but by then their relationship had ended. But the erratic O’Neal family dynamics that had previously strain their relationship persisted.
Although charges against the elder O’Neal were never pursued, he was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of assault and firing a weapon during an altercation with Griffin. Redmond, their son, was jailed, arrested, and sent to treatment on a court-mandated basis on multiple occasions.
Redmond O’Neal was arrested for possessing methamphetamine in September 2008 after his father’s Malibu home was used for a probation check. Ryan O’Neal entered a drug diversion program after entering a guilty plea to the charge, but he openly denied owning the drugs. He claimed that in an effort to keep his son safe, he took them away from him.
The son of actor Patricia Callaghan Ryan O’Neal and screenwriter Charles O’Neal, Charles Patrick Ryan O’Neal was born on April 20, 1941. Before realizing that performing was his true calling, Ryan O’Neal worked as a lifeguard and an amateur boxer.
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