American actor Ryan O’Neal, known for iconic films of the 1970s such as Love Story and Paper Moon, died this Friday at the age of 82.
“This is very hard for us (…) Ryan had a great impact and this will be difficult without him. It is and will be a huge void in our lives,” announced his son, sports presenter Patrick O’Neal, in a publication from Instagram.
No further details were provided about the death, but O’Neal was diagnosed with chronic leukemia in 2001 and prostate cancer in 2012.
O’Neal began to carve out a space for himself on the small screen with the nighttime soap opera Peyton Place, in which he appeared alongside Mia Farrow, to make a meteoric leap to the cinema with the acclaimed Love Story (1970) alongside Ali MacGraw, which won seven Oscar nominations, including his as leading actor.
Two years later, he would star in the comedy What’s Up, Doc, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, in which he played a young music teacher who meets the eccentric young Judy (Barbra Streisand), with whom he meets. It left countless crazy situations that still exist among film lovers.
O’Neal and Bogdanovich would reteam in Paper Moon (1973), where, alongside Madelyn Kahn, he demonstrated his versatility as a comic and moving actor at the same time.
He was married to the actresses Joanna Moore (1963-1967) and Leigh Taylor-Young (1967-1974) and in 1981 he began a courtship with the famous Farrah Fawcett, star of the series Charlie’s Angels, with whom he ended up in 1997. From that relationship, their son Redmond O’Neal, also an actor, was born.
However, their union was marked by O’Neal’s alleged infidelities, addiction problems and an alleged lack of control over his temper that also affected his career.
Thus, he progressively lost relevance in Hollywood until he was relegated to sporadic work in the 1990s, such as the feature film The Man Upstairs (1992) alongside Katherine Hepburn, or the comedy-thriller film Zero Effect, directed by Jake Kasdan.
“I will share my father’s legacy forever. I will not be stopped by outside voices that say negative things. If you decide to speak badly about my father, even if you have no idea what you are talking about, your attention will be called,” stressed his son Patrick in this Friday’s statement.
In 2012, three years after Fawcett died of cancer, O’Neal published his memoirs Both of Us: My Life with Farrah, in which he gave his version of the bond he had with the female icon and tried to direct his family relationship after a long estrangement with his daughter, the Oscar-winning actress Tatum O’Neal.
