Ryan O’Neal, a boxer turned actor with a six-decade career on film and television, died today. He was 82. His son, Patrick, shared on Instagram that O’Neal died “peacefully, with his loving team beside his side supporting him as he would us.†O’Neal had previously been diagnosed with leukemia in 2001 and prostate cancer in 2012. Patrick said his father was his “hero†and “bigger than life.†“My dad was 82, and lived a kick ass life,†he wrote in a subsequent post. “Ryan never bragged. But he has bragging rights in Heaven.â€
The son of screenwriter Charles O’Neal, Ryan O’Neal had competed as an amateur boxer in high school before his family moved to Munich. There, he got a job as a stuntman on Tales of the Vikings, where he became interested in acting. He soon moved back to Los Angeles, where he’d grown up, and guested on a number of TV shows. He got his first lead role in 1962, on the NBC western Empire. By 1964, he was cast on the prime-time soap opera Peyton Place and starred for 422 episodes. He began acting in movies at the end of the decade, and soon found success opposite Ali MacGraw in Love Story, which earned him an Oscar nomination. He soon became one of the biggest stars of the decade, acting in Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? opposite Barbra Streisand, in the director’s Paper Moon, in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as the title role, and in The Main Event once again with Streisand. Tatum O’Neal, his daughter with first wife Joanna Moore, starred alongside him in Paper Moon, and, at age 10, became the youngest actor ever to win an Oscar. The two had a difficult relationship, but reconciled later in life in a reality TV series Ryan and Tatum: The O’Neals. In a July 2023 profile for The Hollywood Reporter, she said, “I love him. I love my dad. I mean, I’ve had a hard life with my dad — but I still love him.â€
Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, O’Neal continued to act, mainly in films, but by the 2000s, he had returned to television. He appeared in the failed drama Bull and the failed comedy Miss Match before eventually finding success in Bones as Max, father of Temperance “Bones†Brennan. He also guested on Desperate Housewives and 90210. In 2016, he starred in the play Love Letters with his Love Story co-star MacGraw.
Other than his acting, O’Neal was best known for his relationship with the late star Farrah Fawcett. They began dating in 1979, after he was introduced by her then-husband, Lee Majors. While Fawcett broke off their relationship in 1997 over O’Neal’s infidelity, they got back together in 2001, after O’Neal’s leukemia diagnosis. They continued dating throughout Fawcett’s own cancer diagnosis, until she died in 2009. “He has missed her terribly,†his son Patrick wrote. “What an embrace that must be. Together again.â€