"Love means never having to say 'I'm sorry.'" The phrase was beyond corny, but it served to dazzle an entire generation of girls who cried openly with Love story (Arthur Hiller, 1970) and at the same time went crazy for it. its protagonist, the attractive Ryan O'Neal.
The actor played a rich college student who fell in love with an Italian girl, Ali MacGraw. The couple managed to overcome one obstacle after another to be together, but in the end she died, leaving young O'Neal widowed and devastated. Love story was a great success that earned its protagonists Oscar nominations and turned them into famous stars around the world overnight.
O'Neal thus stood out in the world of acting at only 29 years old. But he was always predestined for cinema and not only because of his physical beauty. The actor, born in Los Angeles in 1941, was the son of a screenwriter, Charles O'Neal, and an actress, Patricia Callaghan, and at a very young age he joined the cast of the most famous soap opera of the sixties, Peyton Place, where he fell in love with a also very young Mia Farrow.
After working under Blake Edwards in Two Men Against the West (1971) alongside two great stars of classic Hollywood such as William Holden and Karl Malden, O'Neal had the opportunity to demonstrate his talent as a comedian in the wonderful What's Me? What's up, doctor? (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972), one of the last screwballs that American cinema gave to fans of the seventh art.
With a structure similar to that of Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938), What's wrong with me, doctor? tells the story of a timid scientist who travels to San Francisco for a conference. There he meets Judy Maxwell, a crazy girl, played by Barbra Streisand in a state of grace, and gets into one trouble after another to the amusement of the public.
The actor returned to Bogdanovich's direction in Paper Moon, a dramatic comedy set in the years of the Great Depression, which was also a success. O'Neal played a scoundrel who had to take care of a girl. The role of the little girl went to her real-life daughter, Tatum, who won the Oscar for best supporting actress at just ten years old.
At that point, O'Neal's career was flourishing and it was not at all strange that a great director like Stanley Kubrick gave him the lead role in Barry Lyndon (1975), an adaptation of William Tackeray's novel of the same title that enchanted the public. criticism.
O'Neal continued making films but his star faded after those four hits. He participated in A Faraway Bridge (Richard Attenborough, 1977), an ensemble film about the landings in Normandy; He attempted to revive the success of What's wrong with me, doctor? in another comedy with Streisand, Bottom Fight (Howard Zieff, 1979), set in the world of boxing, and he starred in a buddy cop movie, then so fashionable, with John Hurt, Something More Than Buddies (James Burrows, 1982).
Starting in the eighties, the surname O'Neal went from the movie theater marquees to the headlines of the gossip press. The actor, who had been married to Joanna Moore and Leigh Taylor-Young, began a relationship in 1979 with Farrah Fawcett, one of the famous Charlie's Angels. In parallel, he had romances with other actresses such as Anjelica Huston, Jacqueline Bisset, Anouk Aimée or Ursula Andress.
It seems that he also let himself be seduced by drugs and perhaps that caused the decline of a career that promised to be much brighter. Her addiction also caused conflicts with some of her children. O'Neal, now away from the cameras, died on Friday in Los Angeles at the age of 82.
