Ryan O'Neal Hit Big With Love Story

Co-star Ali MacGraw got him cast in teary 1970 blockbuster
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 8, 2023 5:30 PM CST
Love Story Launched Series of Hit Films for Ryan O'Neal
Ryan O'Neal, left, and Farrah Fawcett attend a premiere in 1989.   (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine, File)

Ryan O'Neal, the boyish star who rose to film fame in 1970's weepy blockbuster Love Story, died Friday. His death at age 82 was announced in an Instagram post by his son Patrick, who did not provide any more information, the New York Times reports. The actor was diagnosed with chronic leukemia in 2001 and prostate cancer in 2012. "My father was as generous as they come," Patrick O'Neal wrote. "And the funniest person in any room. And the most handsome clearly." It was that quality the actor traded on at the beginning of his career, as a prime-time TV heartthrob on Peyton Place. O'Neal played Rodney Harrington in more than 500 episodes of the soap opera.

At 29, after a decade on TV, O'Neal won the part of Oliver Barrett IV in Erich Segal's story about a wealthy Harvard student-athlete whose wife was dying. Bigger names turned the part down, he later said, and O'Neal initially was rejected. Ali MacGraw, who played his wife, persuaded the studio to hire O'Neal for the part, which paid $25,000. Love Story was the highest-grossing film of the year, and O'Neal was nominated for an Academy Award for the only time. A series of hits followed, per the Hollywood Reporter. He co-starred with Barbra Streisand in What's Up, Doc? and The Main Event, and with his 9-year-old daughter Tatum in Paper Moon, for which she won an Oscar. Other films included The Thief Who Came to Dinner and A Bridge Too Far.

O'Neal gained a reputation early for his partying lifestyle, temper, and use of alcohol and drugs. His relations with his children, who also struggled with drugs, were not smooth: Tatum O'Neal accused him of abuse and ranked him as one of the worst parents in Hollywood. His status as a top star ended, but he kept working through the 1990s, often on television; one of his most recent jobs was a recurring role on the series Bones. O'Neal was married twice, but his best-known relationship—on and off for more than 20 years—was with actress Farrah Fawcett. She died of cancer in 2009, and O'Neal had been "a constant presence" throughout her illness, per the Washington Post. After her death, he told Piers Morgan, he found it upsetting to watch Love Story. (More obituary stories.)

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