l“And I asked her to marry me, and she said yes.” Ryan O’Neal, excited, live, on television, told in June 2009 how he had rediscovered love with Farrah Fawcett, who had been his on-and-off lover for 30 years and was then dying of cancer. He would end his life days later. The public, eager for romantic stories, ‘bought’ the moving version and the press did not skimp on headlines. Those same days, a journalist, Leslie Bennetts, spent hours with O’Neal and heard comments that even her confessed addictions do not make any less serious: “Don’t forget that I worked in love story; “I already have experience in dealing with sick people.”
It’s not by far the most amazing thing Bennetts had to hear. «When Farrah turned 60 [en 2007, ella ya estaba muy enferma], we celebrated a party at home. At one point I shot my son,” O’Neal told me matter-of-factly, as if there was nothing extraordinary about the thing. «I could have hit him, but I didn’t hit him. Farrah was in bed and she could hear everything: the fights, the screams, the gunshots… Welcome to the O’Neal home!
It is true that the actor alternated these unfortunate comments with tears and went through all kinds of moods with ‘artificial’ ease. Although he downplayed his addictions – he never hid the fact that he consumed drugs and alcohol – it undoubtedly marked his life and that of those around him, especially that of Farrah, his most stable partner despite his ups and downs, and that of his four children. , which he had with three different mothers.
O’Neal had no qualms about confessing his infidelities to Farrah, with whom he lived for 18 years. But the loudest and most definitive episode took place in 1997, when Fawcett caught O’Neal with Leslie Stefanson, a 25-year-old actress, on Valentine’s Day. “It was horrible,” Ryan recalls in Vanity Fair–. She didn’t expect her to show up at home that day. Leslie hid under the duvet. I thought Farrah was going to hit her, but she just said, ‘What’s your name?’ And she left “.
On Farrah’s 60th birthday, Ryan O’Neal shot her son Griffin, who, in turn, was implicated in the death of Francis Ford Coppola’s son.
The son Ryan O’Neal shot was Griffin, the result of his first marriage and with whom he had a fierce confrontation. He is the one who has been the clearest about his father’s abuse and the one who has most questioned his true love for Farrah. He has detailed infidelities and assaults. “My father forced me to take cocaine for the first time when he was 11 years old.” That’s how blunt he is when talking about O’Neal’s “psychopath.”
Griffin, in turn, also has a history. A drug user, he has been arrested for several crimes, including illegal possession of weapons, but his most serious offense took place in 1986, when he was behind the wheel of a speedboat under the influence of drugs and alcohol and there was an accident. accident that ended the life of his friend Giancarlo, son of Francis Ford Coppola. Griffin was acquitted of manslaughter, but convicted of reckless driving.
Griffin is the brother of Tatum, O’Neal’s most famous daughter for winning an Oscar at the age of ten, marrying tennis player John McEnroe and losing herself in the world of heroin shortly after. O’Neal’s next child, Patrick, the result of his second marriage to Leigh Taylor-Young, a minister of a sect called the Inner Knowledge Movement, appears to have had a more normal life. He hosts a sports program and does well, although Ryan claimed that he “is an unpleasant person.” The only one of his children he spoke to is, in fact, Redmond, the youngest, 30 years old, the one he had with Farrah and who has been in jail on several occasions for possession of narcotics and armed robbery.
If his relationship with his children was like this, it is not difficult to imagine what it is like and, above all, what it was like with his wives. When O’Neal met Fawcett he was a celebrity, the Brad Pitt of the 70s. He started on a hit television series, Peyton Placebut became a star in 1970 with love story, a romantic drama with a tragic ending. His career from then on should have been brilliant and yet it went nowhere, largely due to his unbearable character resulting from drug use.
O’Neal had already been through two marriages when in 1979 his friend, actor Lee Majors, married to Farrah Fawcett, asked him, since he was going to be away filming a movie, to take his wife out to dinner so she wouldn’t get bored. Reckless when it comes to a seducer like O’Neal who had already conquered Diana Ross or Barbra Streisand. The Fawcett-Majors couple did not survive that first date.
Texan Farrah Fawcett was then the most spectacular blonde in Hollywood cinema. Her participation in 1976 in Charlie’s Angels It is one of the most impressive sociological phenomena generated by the small screen. However, his career also stalled. After his departure from the series, he achieved some successes in the cinema, but in the mid-80s he no longer stopped working on television miniseries and began to become depressed.
Farrah exposed her illness, anal cancer with metastasis to the liver, in a documentary that showed her moaning, vomiting and losing her legendary hair.
In 1985 her son Redmond was born, which should have balanced her, but it didn’t. The boy began to have addictive problems at a very young age – according to Farrah, due to his relationship with Griffin, O’Neal’s son; according to Griffin, due to the permissiveness of his father, who even supplied him with narcotics – and he ended up going from boarding schools to detoxification centers and from there, to prison.
Over the years, the situation worsened. The couple’s continuous fights were known, but their final separation in 1997 sank Fawcett, although she shortly began another relationship, with producer James Orr, which ended up in court. Orr was convicted of assaulting Farrah, although the judge acknowledged that she had previously attacked him with a baseball bat.
The picture changed when O’Neal was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001. Despite everything, Farrah returned to his side. His illness coincided with Fawcett’s cancer; Hers, an anus with liver metastases, turned out much worse. At first, Fawcett recorded some visits to the doctors with a camera for her personal use, but the actress, who was convinced that she would overcome it, thought that her experience could be useful to other patients. This is how the documentary was born Farrah’s storythe diary of his fight against cancer, which NBC aired shortly before his death with overwhelming ratings success.
Fawcett appeared on television vomiting, moaning and losing his hair when, at the age of 62, he was dying beyond repair. O’Neal spoke precisely about the loss of her splendid hair in one of the many interviews she has given since she became ill and confessed that she had kept it when she cut it during chemotherapy. Her son Griffin, however, sees nothing sentimental in that gesture and assures that Farrah’s hair will end up auctioned to the highest bidder.
During his funeral, Ryan O’Neal, in the front row, helped carry the coffin and was described by the press as “overwhelmed with grief.” Maybe, but an anecdote that he himself tells is more than revealing. “After leaving the coffin, a blonde came and hugged me,” says Ryan. I told her she needed a drink and asked if she had a car. She exclaimed: ‘But, dad! It’s me, Tatum!’ You see, I was fooling around with some kind of unknown Swede, and she turned out to be my daughter… Don’t tell me it’s not horrible.
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