Ryan O’Neal used to be a big name in Hollywood. I’m sure in the 1970s, many American teenage girl had at one time his picture up in their rooms just like his long-time partner, Farrah Fawcett, became a popular pin-up. His boy next door good looks made him the middle-class ying to Robert Redford’s ivy preppy yang.
Originally trained to be an amateur boxer, he became a popular actor with his role on Peyton Place which transitioned into popular roles in Love Story and What’s Up, Doc. Then there was his role in the Oscar-winning Paper Moon. He was on fire. O’Neal was Hollywood’s It Boy as studio and major producers wanted him to play Michael Corleone in The Godfather and Robert “Rocky” Balboa in Rocky. All actors want to be the one the studios want for a movie come Hell or High Water. And O’Neal had that.
He eventually would be cast by Stanley Kubrick in the titular role as Barry Lyndon. O’Neal finished the 1970s appearing in A Bridge Too Far and Walter Hill’s cult crime thriller The Driver. Nearing his 40s, O’Neal was an A-lister and a star. But that’s where the problems started.
O’Neal was married to actresses Joanna Moore and Leigh Taylor-Young, both ended in divorce. He reportedly had a volitile temper and struggled with substance abuse for many years. Despite being in a relationship with Fawcett from 1979 to 1997, it ended when she discovered he had an affair with actress Leslie Stefanson.
His relationships would become Page Six tabloid fodder. He had relationships with Ursula Andress, Bianca Jagger, Joan Collins, Barbra Streisand (who he co-starred with in Doc), Dianna Ross (who he was supposed to co-star with in The Bodyguard before she dropped out), Jacqueline Bissett and Anjelica Huston. Huston would reveal in her 2014 memoir that O’Neal was physically abusive.
And as the 1980s ended, his relationship with his daughter, Tatum (who won an Oscar for Paper Moon), would become rocky. Tatum would later reveal that one of her father’s drug dealers sexually assaulted her. It wasn’t until 2011 Tatum revealed that she was starting to mend their relationship after 25-30 years of turmoil. Ironically, his role as a film director estranged from his daughter played by Drew Barrymore in Irreconcible Differences would mirror his relationship with Tatum.
O’Neal’s career faulted in the 1980s with heavily criticized roles in movies like Fever Pitch and Tough Guys Dont Dance. The latter movie would become a popular meme online for the “Worst Line Reading” as O’Neal’s character responds by screaming, “Oh, man! Oh, God!” over and over. He would finish the 1980s co-starring alongside Cybil Shepherd and Robert Downey Jr. in Chances Are. But his film career was struggling.
In the 1990s, he was absent mostly, except for a cameo in the Disney movie Man of the House alongside Fawcett. Then, there was the infamous An Alan Smithee Movie: Burn Hollywood Burn, a Hollywood satire penned by Joe Eszterhas, that would have the same behind the scenes problems it was suppose to be parodying. The movie ended up on many Worst Lists and was a box office bomb. However, Zero Effect, a modern-day retelling of a Sherlock Holmes story, directed by Jake Kasdan in his first movie would get good reviews.
He appeared in movies sporadically in the 2000s and 2010s appearing in People I Know, alongside Al Pacino, who as we all know was Michael Corleone. But it was on TV where he found some success in an recurring role as Max Keenan, father of Emily Deschanel’s character on Bones. When the series ended in 2017, O’Neal’s retired from acting.
He rekindled his relationship with Fawcett in 2001 when he was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia and they stayed together until 2009 when she died of cancer. O’Neal said during a 2012 interview they had actually discussed having the hospital chaplain marrying them before she passed. But she was so weak that O’Neal said the chaplain could only perform the last rites.
O’Neal’s relationship with his son, Griffin, was more tumultuous than with Tatum. He barred Griffin from attending the funeral for Fawcett, even though she was the mother of his half-brother, Redmond. In 2007, O’Neal was arrested for shooting at Griffin but his son refused to press charges. Griffin later said that he had been trying to get Redmond sober. Griffin would say that his father let him try cocaine when he was 11 and had been drinking since he was 9.
In 1983, Griffin accused O’Neal of punching two of his front teeth out but didn’t press charges. H”e was a very abusive, narcissistic psychopath. He gets so mad he can’t control anything he’s doing,” he told People.
Griffin himself struggled with substance abuse was arrested and convicted of multiple DUIs. In 1987, Griffin was piloting a boat when he passed between two boats with a towline that struck and killed Gian-Carlo Coppola, son of director Francis Ford Coppola. Griffin had been cast in Garden of Stone before he was let go and charged with manslaughter, later pleaded to negligently operating a boat.
Following the 2007 incicent, Griffin said in a 2015 interview he hadn’t spoken with his father since. It’s not known at this time if they had mended their relationship. In 2012, O’Neal said he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer. O’Neal’s son, Patrick, a sportscaster and actor, said that his father had died surrounded by family but didn’t speculate who was all present. He said his father had been battling illnesses for several years.
O’Neal was 82.
What is your favorite role of Ryan O’Neal’s? Please comment.
Zane Says 