Oscar-nominated actor Ryan O’Neal has died. The star of Love Story (for which he acquired a greatest actor nod) Peyton Place, Barry Lyndon, and Paper Moon was 82.
“So this is the toughest thing I’ve ever had to say but here we go,” his son Patrick O’Neal wrote in a Dec. 8 Instagram submit. “My dad passed away peacefully today, with his loving team by his side supporting him and loving him as he would us.” A reason for demise was not disclosed. O’Neal had been identified with leukemia in 2001 and prostate most cancers in 2012.
Ryan O’Neal was an iconic main man with a tumultuous private life
O’Neal began out as an newbie boxer earlier than turning to performing within the Nineteen Sixties with elements in reveals corresponding to The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Go away It to Beaver, and My Three Sons. His breakout function was enjoying Rodney Harrington on the cleaning soap Peyton Place. In 1970, he starred reverse Ali MacGraw in Love Story. Main roles in What’s Up, Doc?, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Paper Moon (which co-starred his younger daughter Tatum O’Neal), and A Bridge Too Far adopted. Later roles included the 1984 film Irreconcilable Variations and appearances within the TV reveals Miss Match and Bones.
Although O’Neal loved appreciable skilled success, his private life was tumultuous. He was married twice, first to actor Joanna Moore after which to actor Leigh Taylor-Younger. He additionally had a decades-long relationship with Farrah Fawcett that started in 1979. In 2007, he was arrested after capturing a gun at his son, Griffin O’Neal. In 2008, he and his son with Fawcett, Redmond O’Neal, have been arrested for drug possession. O’Neal’s relationship with Fawcett led to 1997 when she caught him in mattress with one other girl. They later rekindled their romance after he was identified with leukemia.
Ryan O’Neal discovered it laborious to watch ‘Love Story’ after Farrah Fawcett’s demise
O’Neal and Fawcett by no means married. However after reconciling, they remained collectively till her demise in 2009 from most cancers.
“There was never a day I didn’t love her,” he advised People in 2019.
His grief from shedding Fawcett was so uncooked that it affected how he considered Love Story. In that film, O’Neal performed a rich Harvard scholar who falls in love with a working-class lady. They marry regardless of his household’s objections, however quickly after, she dies of most cancers.
Watching Love Story “upsets me, actually,” O’Neal mentioned in a 2011 interview with Piers Morgan (by way of The Hollywood Reporter).
“I lost Farrah to cancer, and I just wonder [why] that played out that way for me. One was just a big deal and so successful, and then in real life it was just the opposite, a tragedy.”
In his tribute to his dad, Patrick O’Neal took consolation in the concept his father and his longtime love would now be reunited.
“Ryan never bragged. But he has bragging rights in Heaven. Especially when it comes to Farrah,” he wrote. “Everyone had the poster, he had the real McCoy. And now they meet again. Farrah and Ryan. He has missed her terribly. What an embrace that must be. Together again.”
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