Ryan O’Neal, ‘Love Story’ Star, Dead at 82
Ryan O’Neal, star of Seventies films Love Story, What’s Up, Doc? and Paper Moon, has died, his son Patrick confirmed on Instagram Friday. He was 82 years old.
“My dad passed away peacefully today, with his loving team by his side supporting him and loving him as he would us,” Patrick wrote. “My father Ryan O’Neal has always been my hero. I looked up to him and he was always bigger than life.”
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O’Neal got his start in Hollywood in the 1960s, starring in prime-time soap opera Peyton Place from 1964 through 1969. By 1970, he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his role as Oliver Barrett in Love Story, starring alongside Ali MacGraw, who was nominated for Best Actress.
By 1972, O’Neal co-starred in What’s Up, Doc? with Barbara Streisand, and garnered a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in 1974 for his role in Paper Moon, which also featured his daughter Tatum. He was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2021. O’Neal was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012 after previously being diagnosed with leukemia in 2001.
O’Neal married and divorced actresses Joanna Moore and Leigh Taylor-Young before starting a decades-long relationship with Farrah Fawcett in 1979. Fawcett and O’Neal separated in 1997, then reunited in 2001. The couple remained together until Fawcett died in 2009. O’Neal is survived by four children: He had Tatum and Griffen O’Neal with Moore, Patrick O’Neal with Taylor-Young, and Redmond Fawcett O’Neal with Fawcett.
“When I was born in 1967 my dad was already a TV star on Peyton Place,” Patrick wrote, also attributing the rise in the name Ryan in the Seventies to his father. “My dad became an international movie star with Love Story at the beginning of the 1970’s, a decade he absolutely crushed by starring in movies like What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon, Barry Lyndon, A Bridge Too Far, The Main Event, and The Driver.
He is a Hollywood legend. Full stop.”
Ryan’s daughter Tatum also remembered her late father in a statement to People Friday. “I feel great sorrow with my father’s passing,” she said, “He meant the world to me. I loved him very much and know he loved me too. I’ll miss him forever and I feel very lucky that we ended on such good terms.”
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