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Obituaries

Ryan O’Neal, star of ‘Love Story’ and ‘Paper Moon,’ dies at 82

By Valerie J. Nelson
Los Angeles Times
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Actor Ryan O'Neal speaks at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011, during a ceremony where objects from the private collection of Farrah Fawcett's estate were donated. O’Neal, who was nominated for an Oscar for the tear-jerker “Love Story” and played opposite his precocious daughter Tatum in “Paper Moon,” has died.

Actor Ryan O'Neal speaks at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011, during a ceremony where objects from the private collection of Farrah Fawcett's estate were donated. O’Neal, who was nominated for an Oscar for the tear-jerker “Love Story” and played opposite his precocious daughter Tatum in “Paper Moon,” has died. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

He emerged as a heartthrob on television’s “Peyton Place” in the 1960s and arrived as a movie star in the sentimental 1970 box-office hit “Love Story.” Yet Ryan O’Neal achieved his most enduring fame off-screen, as the longtime companion of actress Farrah Fawcett and father of four whose turbulent family drama often landed in the headlines.

After O’Neal was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying a preppy, star-crossed lover in “Love Story,” Bob Hope introduced him at the Oscars as Hollywood’s “leading boy,” a reference to O’Neal’s clean-cut good looks and relative youth. He was not quite 30.

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When major long-term success eluded him, agent Sue Mengers theorized that her client’s romance with sex symbol Fawcett had helped sink his acting career: Together they were too Hollywood, too perfect, “Barbie dolls” who took your breath away. Others suggested his volatile nature was to blame.

Once O’Neal and Fawcett started dating in 1979, their stormy on-again, off-again relationship spanned the rest of her life. She returned to O’Neal’s side in 2001 when he was diagnosed with leukemia, and he was there for Fawcett during her three-year cancer battle that ended with her death at 62 in 2009.

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Never fully out from under her shadow, O’Neal died Friday, his son Patrick said in an Instagram post. Ryan O’Neal had announced that he had prostate cancer in 2012. He was 82.

“My dad passed away peacefully today, with his loving team by his side supporting him and loving him as he would us,” the actor and sportscaster wrote Friday. No cause of death was given.

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