Ryan O’Neal Once Said It Was Upsetting to Watch ‘Love Story’ After Farrah Fawcett’s Death
Oscar-nominated actor Ryan O’Neal has died. The star of Love Story (for which he received a best 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 post. “My dad passed away peacefully today, with his loving team by his side supporting him and loving him as he would us.” A cause of death was not disclosed. O’Neal had been diagnosed with leukemia in 2001 and prostate cancer in 2012.
Ryan O’Neal was an iconic leading man with a tumultuous personal life
O’Neal started out as an amateur boxer before turning to acting in the 1960s with parts in shows such as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Leave It to Beaver, and My Three Sons. His breakout role was playing Rodney Harrington on the soap Peyton Place. In 1970, he starred opposite Ali MacGraw in Love Story. Leading roles in What’s Up, Doc?, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Paper Moon (which co-starred his young daughter Tatum O’Neal), and A Bridge Too Far followed. Later roles included the 1984 movie Irreconcilable Differences and appearances in the TV shows Miss Match and Bones.
Though O’Neal enjoyed considerable professional success, his personal life was tumultuous. He was married twice, first to actor Joanna Moore and then to actor Leigh Taylor-Young. He also had a decades-long relationship with Farrah Fawcett that began in 1979. In 2007, he was arrested after shooting a gun at his son, Griffin O’Neal. In 2008, he and his son with Fawcett, Redmond O’Neal, were arrested for drug possession. O’Neal’s relationship with Fawcett ended in 1997 when she caught him in bed with another woman. They later rekindled their romance after he was diagnosed with leukemia.
Ryan O’Neal found it hard to watch ‘Love Story’ after Farrah Fawcett’s death
O’Neal and Fawcett never married. But after reconciling, they remained together until her death in 2009 from cancer.
“There was never a day I didn’t love her,” he told People in 2019.
His grief from losing Fawcett was so raw that it affected how he viewed Love Story. In that movie, O’Neal played a wealthy Harvard student who falls in love with a working-class girl. They marry despite his family’s objections, but soon after, she dies of cancer.
Watching Love Story “upsets me, actually,” O’Neal said in a 2011 interview with Piers Morgan (via 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 comfort in the idea that 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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