One of many Sixties and ’70s largest stars has died. Ryan O’Neal, finest referred to as the star of the huge ’70s hit Love Story, handed away on Friday. He was 82 years outdated.
His loss of life was revealed by his son Patrick on his Instagram account.
“That is the hardest factor I’ve ever needed to say,” Patrick O’Neal wrote, “My father Ryan O’Neal has at all times been my hero. I appeared as much as him and he was at all times larger than life.”
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Born Charles Patrick Ryan O’Neal in Los Angeles in 1941, his breakthrough got here on tv within the mid-Sixties, when he was forged as Rodney Harrington on the nighttime cleaning soap opera Peyton Place. O’Neal appeared on the present from 1964 by way of 1969, starring in a whole bunch of episodes.
After Peyton Place, O’Neal transitioned to films, and really shortly discovered main success in 1970’s Love Story, a tragic romance through which he starred reverse Ali MacGraw. The movie turned the #1 box-office hit of the yr, and stays one of many largest films of all time when adjusted for inflation. The movie’s most well-known line — “Love means by no means having to say you’re sorry” — stays part of the cultural lexicon to at the present time. O’Neal was nominated for an Academy Award for Greatest Actor for the movie. (He misplaced to George C. Scott for Patton.)
A string of hits adopted as O’Neal turned one of many largest stars of the “New Hollywood” period. He performed a dweeby musicologist reverse Barbra Streisand in Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc?, top-of-the-line rom-coms of any period. Then he reteamed with Bogdanovich, and his real-life daughter Tatum O’Neal in for the black-and-white dramedy Paper Moon. (The youthful O’Neal wound up successful an Oscar for Greatest Supporting Actress for her work within the movie.) In 1975, he performed the title function in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Though not a smash in its day, the film has come to be thought of one in every of Kubrick’s best works.
O’Neal’s most underrated film is perhaps The Driver, Walter Hill’s terse crime flick a few getaway driver who will get in over his head. Though it flopped in theaters and stays pretty obscure right now, the film stays a cult favourite, and may be very fashionable amongst fashionable administrators. It closely influenced Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive starring Ryan Gosling and Edgar Wright’s Child Driver.
The late ’70s and into the early ’80s have been definitely the height for O’Neal however he labored in movie and tv for a few years. And his finest performances got here in sone of the most important hits of his period, guaranteeing he shall be remembered for a few years to return.
“He’s a Hollywood legend. Full cease,” Patrick O’Neal wrote of his father.
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