Ryan O’Neal, the heartthrob actor who went from a TV soap opera to an Oscar-nominated role in Love Story and delivered a wry performance opposite his charismatic 9-year-old daughter Tatum in Paper Moon, died Friday, his son said.
“My dad passed away peacefully today, with his loving team by his side supporting him and loving him as he would us,” Patrick O’Neal, a Los Angeles sportscaster, posted on Instagram.
No cause of death was given. O’Neal was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012, a decade after he was first diagnosed with chronic leukemia. He was 82.
O’Neal was among the biggest movie stars in the world in the 1970s, working across genres with many of the era’s most celebrated directors including Peter Bogdanovich on Paper Moon and What’s Up, Doc? and Stanley Kubrick on Barry Lyndon. O’Neal maintained a steady television acting career into his 70s in the 2010s, appearing for stints on Bones and Desperate Housewives, but his longtime relationship with Farrah Fawcett and his…