Ryan O'Neal mini-bio: Ryan O'Neal (born Patrick Ryan O'Neal on April 20, 1941 in Los Angeles, California) is an Oscar- and Golden Globe- award nominated American actor.
O'Neal was born in Los Angeles, California to Irish-American Hollywood movie screenwriter Charles O'Neal and actress Patricia Callaghan and first became famous on the soap opera Peyton Place.
His role in Love Story gained him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Further starring roles have been in Paper Moon (co-starring his daughter, Oscar-winner Tatum O'Neal), the Stanley Kubrick directed Barry Lyndon, and the Love Story sequel, Oliver's Story.
O'Neal starred in a series of films directed by Peter Bogdanovich and was the second highest grossing movie star in 1972. However his film career had faded by the end of the decade. He has also appeared in several television series.
O'Neal has been in a long-term (off and on again) relationship with actress Farrah Fawcett. He also dated Diana Ross for some time. He was previously married to actresses Joanna Moore and Leigh Taylor-Young. He has four children: Tatum O'Neal and Griffin O'Neal (with Moore), Patrick O'Neal (with Taylor-Young) and Redmond O'Neal (with Fawcett).
In 2001 he was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). As of 2006, it is in remission. After struggling with leukemia, O'Neal was frequently seen at the side of his former companion, Farrah Fawcett, during her own bout with cancer.
O'Neal was arrested for allegedly assaulting his son, Griffin, in Malibu, California, which coincidentally is the setting for one of O'Neal's later movies Malibu's Most Wanted starring Jamie Kennedy, police said on February 4, 2007.
O'Neal was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and negligent discharge[4] of a firearm and released on $50,000 bond.
According to O'Neal's manager, Neil Hassman, the incident occurred when Griffin O'Neal threatened Ryan O'Neal with a fireplace poker. It was reported at the same time that this confrontation left a 22-year-old woman with injuries unrelated to the firing of the handgun; the origins of her injury and the responsible party had not been identified as of February 5. The 22-year-old woman was later confirmed as JoAnne Berry, Griffin O'Neal's girlfriend.
O'Neal in an interview with the Los Angeles Times charged that his son grazed him "four or five times" with the fireplace poker and that when he ducked to avoid the swinging weapon, Griffin "hit his own girlfriend in the head." O'Neal adds that he got "nervous" because of the woman's pregnancy. "I fled to my room," he says, "and I got my gun." When Griffin pursued him anew, says Ryan, he fired his gun "into the banister" to scare Griffin into fleeing. This is not the first time O'Neal has been accused of assaulting his son Griffin; rumors have circulated concerning O'Neal's temper with his children for some time, gaining some traction with allegations made by his daughter Tatum. In the early 1980s a fight between Ryan and Griffin O'Neal over the latter's drug use left the younger man with two teeth missing.
Complicating matters, a separate report claimed that the cause of the altercation was that Griffin had chained his half-brother Redmond to a staircase in the belief the younger man intended to buy illegal drugs, and that Ryan, discovering the chain on his return from a dinner in honor of Farrah Fawcett, flew into a rage in which he (rather than Griffin) began waving the poker. According to this scenario--sourced to "unidentified law-enforcement officials"--Ryan may have been responsible for the injuries to Miss Berry. Prosecutors declined to charge Ryan O’Neal with assault with a deadly weapon, as of May 25, 2007.
