Ryan and Tatum O'Neal Stories

Oh, Tatum, call me when your father forces you to take drugs and has sex with you. And then puts you on a shitty sitcom with Bonnie Franklin to earn your keep.

A few of these women had staying power. I was drawn to one of them for my usual reasons, her glamour and sophistication and my yearning for a surrogate mother. She would let me experiment with her makeup and try on her beautiful clothes. One night she got really high—everyone in my fathers circle did drugs—and we started playing dress up, trying on little nighties together.

Then, as we kissed and held each other, she started fondling me.I didn't know how to react or feel, especially when she murmured, "I wish I had a penis." Maybe I was caught up in that classic abuse syndrome of pleasure, guilt, and fear, compounded by living in such a highly sexualized environment.

If the woman hadn't been stoned, I doubt that our en-counter would have turned sexual, and I'm sure that she deeply regrets it today. But now—and even back then—it was just one more sign of how wildly out of control my life with my father was spinning.

The whirlwind picked up speed when my father hooked up with Anjelica Huston, who was living with Jack Nicholson, another famous ladies' man. Though Jack was cheating on her, it was still a major Hollywood drama when she left him for my father. Anjelica became another one ol my role model/idols.

Anjelica became the official joint roller in our household because she was the best at it. Conflict was also an element. There were a lot of screaming matches between Anjelica and my father. I would hear him harassing her, tearing up her diaries, as I cried myself to sleep.

YET, AS TURBULENT and frightening as life with my father could be, he was the devil I knew. My mother was more of a mystery.

[quote]I was drawn to one of them for my usual reasons, her glamour and sophistication and my yearning for a surrogate mother. She would let me experiment with her makeup and try on her beautiful clothes. One night she got really high—everyone in my fathers circle did drugs—and we started playing dress up, trying on little nighties together. Then, as we kissed and held each other, she started fondling me.I didn't know how to react or feel, especially when she murmured, "I wish I had a penis."

Geez, Barbra Streisand doesn't come off looking so good, does she?

Ryan tried picking up Tatum at Farrah's funeral. Apparently, he didn't recognize her.

Barbra isn't that adventurous. It could be anyone because he fucked everyone. I was surprised to find that "insiders" reckoned that Ryan got even more ass than Warren Beatty.

I'd grown up around drugs, of course, and always hated seeing my parents impaired. Now, though, I wanted to experiment myself. So one day when I had a girlfriend over, I turned to the most obvious source of drugs—my father—and asked,"Can we try some grass?"He gave us a joint, and we lit it up sitting on my bed. After a couple of tokes, we were hysterical with laughter.

I MET MELANIE GRIFFITH at Hugh Hefner's house, which wasn't exactly a place where teenagers hung out. The only reason I was there at age twelve was that my father had dragged me along. ...... Melanie, who walked my walk and spoke my language, was like stumbling on an oasis in the desert. She wrote me lovely,little friendly notes and was tremendously loving and kind—which was rare for me, so I ate it up. And she could drive. I wound up going with her to her auditions, growing close, and also becoming extremely clingy.

I DIDN'T QUITE CATCH on until we all went to Europe together, during what must have been some school vacation. My father was making A Bridge Too Far, a World War II epic set in Holland. We set off in a group that included my father, Melanie, me, the ever-present Joe Amsler,his old friend Greg, and "Gavin," a drug dealer who seemed to be around a lot.

One night we took in a sex show. No one seemed to question whether this was an inappropriate—possibly even upsetting—spectacle for a young adolescent. But then, no one seemed to be thinking of me at all. Something about the movie was making my father miserable, and he was self-absorbed and angry.However, what disturbed me even more was Melanie. She seemed distant, not interested in being with me, though I believed she was traveling with us as my companion.

She started to disappear for long stretches, which left me feeling painfully rejected. Desperate to know what was going on—and dreading the truth—I did something intrusive. I got a key to my father's room. When I unlocked the door, I found exactly what I feared—Melanie was in bed, having sex, with my father.

It was a huge betrayal. That someone I trusted so much—and I wasn't big on trust—whom I considered my best friend, would choose my father over me just freaked me out. I loved Melanie, absolutely adored her, even idolized her. Now,this seemed like proof that she'd never really cared about me and that my famous father—one more Hollywood-heavyweight lover—had been her target all along.I was so devastated that I felt ready to die, literally.

I broke a glass and started slicing at my arms, having heard that you could die by slitting your wrists. I made big slashes, but I didn't bleed to death.

That failure left me even more depressed, and I decided that pills might be the answer. Since I didn't have any, So I headed to Gavin's room. There was still no sign of Melanie or my father,and no one put much effort into stopping my self-destructive spree. My arms were clotted with blood, and I was out of my mind with misery.When I asked Gavin for drugs, he said okay and gave me some cocaine and a handful of pills, which I washed down with booze from his minibar.

I must have passed out then.When I came to, I was in bed—not in my own, but in Gavin's.I was naked, and he was touching me.It was like something inside me just shriveled up in honor.I can't even remember how I got away from Gavin, dressed myself, and made it back to my own room.

Poor kid, no wonder she turned out to be such a fucked up nightmare as an adult.

When my father saw the condition I was in, he went crazy. "You fucking idiot' he shouted. "You're an embarrassment. You're a fucking disgrace, Tatum." "I hate you," I screamed back, crying.

His response to my jealousy was to let me sleep in his bed that night, along with Melanie. Boundaries were never the strong suit in my family. Then he got rid of us both.

He gave Melanie a few thousand dollars in cash and told her to take me to Paris.WE CHECKED INTO the Plaza Athenee. Maria Schneider,who had made Last Tango in Paris with Marlon Brando, was staying with a male hairdresser in the room next door. They had some drugs and were into wild partying, so we wound up hooking up with them.

One night we all smoked opium and hash. I sank into the bed, dizzy from the drugs, getting so nauseated from the opium that I leaned over the edge and threw up. When I raised my head, a very confusing scene was taking place before my eyes. Melanie, Maria, and the guy were tangled up together. Then one of them reached out for me, drawing me into yet confusing erotic experience.

The next day, Melanie and I went to visit Roman Polanski at the Paris home he'd established after jumping bail in the United States. Neither of us acknowledged how crazy the night had been.

Polanski tried to entertain us by screening In the Realm of the Senses, an X-rated Japanese film about erotic obsession,ending in castration—not the movie I'd have picked to show two young girls. As vulnerable as I was, that freaked me out.

Then we were off to London for a few days. At Blake's Hotel, we bumped into Anjelica Huston,who was still seriously involved, on and off, with my father. She gave me a once-over. My arms were bandaged, and I must have looked as shell-shocked as I felt.

"Tatum, what the hell is happening to you?" she asked."I don't know. I think I'm dying . . ." was all I could say.

It turned out that, after London, Melanie was leaving for Israel to appear in a film called The Garden. Why I tagged along I can't remember; Melanie probably didn't know where else to dump me. We toured the Dead Sea and a few other sights, then Melanie went off to her shoot, leaving me alone in the hotel.

I got increasingly miserable and bored with each passing day.Finally I decided to try to make my way back to the Stairs.Somehow I got a ticket,

That was one of the rockiest experiences of my life—which is saying a lot, considering what I've faced—being lost and totally alone in strange countries, where I couldn't speak the language, as a terrified little girl.

Finally I reached Los Angeles, ready to collapse, and called the person whose love and comfort I always craved and looked for in so many substitutes: .Now, picking me up in her old station wagon, with her wig on her head and her constant cup of coffee in her hand,

.My whole sad story started spilling out: my heartbreak over Melanie and outrage at my father, the shock of being molested by Gavin, my suicide attempt, the weird scene in Paris,and my miserable solitary trek back from Israel. I wanted my mom to be strong, to be my advocate and protect me—I didn't want the abuse and neglect hushed up. But my mother was too scattered and hysterical to stand up for me. Instead she freaked out and called my grandmother.

With typical loyalty to my dad, my grandmother turned on me. "Your father didn't do anything wrong," she said. "It was you who created this whole scene. You're in love with Ryan. Did you sleep with him?"

Of course I hadn't—my father was not a pedophile—but it shocked me to think that if he had been, my grandmother would have blamed me, the child. That realization showed me once and for all that there was no one I could count on—not my mother or my grandmother—not then and not ever.

Denial didn't stop my grandmother from reporting what I'd said to my father. When he got back, he wouldn't even speak tome. Gavin was exiled, though only temporarily, because my father believed that the abuse was at least partly my fault. But I had to go on living with my father while being treated like a whistle blower for telling the truth—for exposing the crazy,drug-fueled, out-of-control decadence of our lives. To him,that was the ultimate transgression.

I DID SEE Melanie again after that trip. My father and I were out at a Moroccan restaurant, Dar Maghreb, on Sunset Boulevard. We were with a bunch of people, all sitting on pillows on the floor.

Melanie was in the group. She made some remark to my father—I don't know what she said—and he pushed her hard enough to send her flying.There was a moment of stunned silence. I went numb with horror, as I always did when my lather suddenly lashed out in rage. As much as Melanie had hurt me, I felt sick at seeing her humiliated

The life of an Academy Award winning Hollywood child star. Horrible!

I hope she writes more. I hope she writes down EVERYTHING. Maybe after Ryan’s gone.

GRIFFIN HAD MOVED into the Barrymore house because life with my mother had gotten unbearable. His acting out had escalated to the point of arrests for possession of stolen good sand replica guns. One day he just lost it, , and called to tell my father he couldn't take it anymore.

Little did he know that he was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Griffin always believed that I was the lucky one—the one with a career and money, the one with a glamorous Hollywood life, the one my father preferred. Once he came to live with us,my father played on that simmering resentment by constantly pitting us against each other, just as he had with me and Carrie and so many others.

He was like a mad jock, always making us run with him—or worse, box. He'd go ding, ding, and then we were supposed to box each other until one of us won the'match."Since Griffin stayed small into his early teens, he often came out on the losing end of our competitions. His slight frame also made him an easy target for my fathers bullying.

Sometimes my father would get so angry that he would just pick Griffin up and toss him into the pool. That always struck me as terribly degrading and almost as bad as hitting, which my dad did plenty of too.I think he must have hated being a parent. One child was bad enough, but the two of us were just too much, strangling him, cutting off his freedom. He felt put upon, like it wasn't his job to take care of us.

It made him angry and he let us know it.He'd storm around, with spit collecting at the edges of his mouth as he fumed at us.

It's really too bad we never got a two-woman show with a marquee reading:

CAROL CHANNING TATUM O'NEAL

At one point my clad hired a weird babysitter to look after us. She used to take us on crazy drives in the Malibu mountains. One day she came up with a more creative way to entertain Griffin and one of his Friends. She shaved oil her pubic hair, while Griffin and his friend watched, and then attempted to have sex with them.

The friend went home totally traumatized and told his parents, who called the police. The babysitter went to prison.Even so, my dad laughed off the whole ordeal and, taking his cue, so did Griffin. There was no room for my brother to acknowledge his feelings about this experience or any other—not even to himself.

HOWEVER, THE REAL nightmare for Griffin centered on drugs. My whole family seems predisposed to addiction, and Griffin started smoking pot furiously from the moment he moved into the Barrymore house. My father would get high with us, and then there'd be ugly scenes

For example, we'd set out in the car, and my father would say, "Where the hell are we going?" as if two stoned teenagers could keep anything straight. When we couldn't remember the directions, he'd shout, "I'm fucking turning this car around. You better figure it out!" or else he'd haul off and hit us.

It made me wildly anxious when my father started dis-patching Griffin to buy his drugs. It was my little BMW that Griffin would use for his drug missions. One night the police caught him and escorted him back to the house. He was only around thirteen.

My outraged father demanded, "How dare you bring the cops home?"

Charges were filed, but somehow my father managed to wriggle Griffin out of them. This was Hollywood in the 1970s, at ime when stardom really counted. There was a huge sense of entitlement among people like my father, a conviction that they were above the law—and it was true. At times I almost wished that Griffin would get busted, not so that he'd get in trouble but so that some responsible party would investigate the way we were living and intervene. There was no parental perimeter, no one who seemed to be watching us, and my father seemed to be losing his sense of reality.

........It was during International Velvet that I lost my virginity to a much older man. He was one of the stuntmen on Superman,which was being shot on a different lot at Pinewood Studios.I'd recently gotten my first period and felt that I was finally a woman, so with a combination of curiosity and longing for intimacy,

I FELT THAT I was blooming while making International Velvet, learning to feel liked and even liking myself a little bit. It was one of the brightest spots of my adolescence. As comfortable as I felt on the movie, though, I always knew that I had to go home. That shook me.

So, as positive an experience as the movie was, I was already a little rocky when my father showed up with Griffin for a visit.

"Where the fuck are my flowers?"My father was livid because I'd neglected to welcome him with flowers in his hotel room. I had no idea that he'd be expecting some or that I was supposed to have arranged it. The tirade went on and on."I made you, Tatum, and look at what you are. You're nothing but a fucking piece of shit, the way you treat me . . ."

For the entire duration of his visit, my father kept attacking me, creating one drama after another. It was as if he sensed that I was being nurtured on this movie.

My father came to the London premiere, bringing,among other people, Gavin—the man who molested me, who after just a brief banishment was now back in the picture. It seemed to me that my father had simply dismissed the abuse because I wasn't worth defending. I was not really surprised.

Afterward, the three of us took a trip to the South of France.It was my idea—a bad one, as it turned out—that we should go by car and see the countryside. Gavin and my father had a big stash of marijuana and were so stoned that I had to do all the driving. It was pretty hair-raising—I was only fourteen, and the road ran along the edge of a steep cliff. The air in the car was so thick with pot smoke I could hardly see. But we made it.

In France my father hooked up with a French perfume spokesmodel—his primary reason for the trip—leaving me to hang out with Gavin. That was creepy, even though Gavin seemed sheepish and tried to ingratiate himself with me again.Not knowing how else to play it, I went along. Clearly my father didn't care about my feelings, and I was too beaten down to protest.

At that point, I was more afraid of my father, with his casual brutality, than I was of Gavin.I have a photo series from that trip, five linked images,which encapsulates our relationship. I'm on the beach , looking gawky and sad and broken....my father, all menacing who cocksback his fist to slug me. I shrink away before he throws the punch. In the final frames, he's leaning back, with his arms folded across his chest and his whole demeanor radiating smugness and contempt, lies obviously pleased with himself for his intimidating show of force.

Ryan punching Tatum

Where was Tippi Hendren during all of this?

No wonder Melanie became such a mess.

According to imdb:

[quote]Was in a relationship with Barbara Parkins between his first and second marriages. In the 1970s he dated Anouk Aimée, Barbara Allen, Ursula Andress, Jacqueline Bisset, Florinda Bolkan, Juanita Brown, Barbara Carrera, Oona Chaplin, Julie Christie, Pat Cleveland, Joan Collins, Britt Ekland, Melanie Griffith, Sabrina Guinness, Christa Helm, Anjelica Huston, Lauren Hutton, Bianca Jagger, Claudine Longet, Diana Ross, Cybill Shepherd, Barbra Streisand, Diane von Fürstenberg and Lana Wood. He was later involved with Leslie Stefanson while on a break from Farrah.

Tippi didn't even mind 14-year old Melanie dating 22-year old Don Johnson.

Tippi was dippy.

R13 , Tatum O'Neal has already written "A Paper Life" (2004) and "Found: A Daughter's Journey Home" in 2012.

Griffin O'Neal should write a book. Here he is in a sad yet hilarious interview with Larry King, talking about Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett.

Ryan O'Neal and William Shatner now look alike.

Angelica seemed to be out of the picture now, and my father was seriously womanizing. He and Diana Ross were slated to do a movie together called The Bodyguard .They began having an affair, and once again, I found myself in the role of my father's call screener. "Tatum, hi,"Diana would say, in a very sweet voice. "Is your daddy home?"Whenever she called—which was often—I was supposed to lie and say that he was out. That made me feel terrible because she seemed so nice. She wasn't hanging around the house, so I didn't actually meet her until the late 1970s, when she came with my father to the set of my next movie, Little Darlings.

So Diana Ross's visits to the set were a highlight. She was like a queen—and very much in love with my father. She even wanted to marry him. He claimed that he didn't like her because she would never let him see her without makeup. He cruelly mistreated her, and eventually they split up.

I had been up all night,hanging out with Carrie at my dad's house, and then spent the day visiting a drug dealer in Malibu with Mackenzie. So I was a wreck. I hadn't slept, ....since I wasn't old enough to drive."Just take your mother's car,"

We got as far as the Ventura Freeway, then suddenly Carrie lost control of the car. We crashed into the guardrail, t and both of us flew out, into the middle of speeding traffic. I was wearing shorts, and as I slid, the asphalt tore up my bare legs. I blacked out, and the next thing I knew,someone was standing over me.

The emergency room staff called my father about admitting us to the hospital. But my father didn't come. Instead he made the weird choice of calling a limo service to continue our trip to Big Sur. It was a three-hour drive. On the way we both went into shock and our hair started falling out.

When we arrived, my father set up Carrie on the floor in a pile of blankets and insisted that I come and sleep in his bed. When I refused, it made him furious. I didn't care. My life was already shattered. I slept on the floor with Carrie.My dad grew even madder as I got sicker. My legs were get-ting septic and I couldn't walk. Unable to ignore such living proof of his bad judgment, he had to fly with us back to L,.A.,punishing me all the way with icy silence.

He didn't want to take me to the hospital—acknowledging that he'd been wrong to dismiss my injuries—and he obviously couldn't leave me alone at home. So he drove me to the home of my agent, Sue Mengers.

Sue Mengers wasn't exactly the mothering type either. She wasn't inhumane, but she was a tough battle-ax who lived and breathed deal making. The only reaction I could imagine her having to my surprise arrival was: "Hello! What's this? What am I, a nanny? A babysitter? I can't put this in a movie!"

But Sue was kind to me, and she had the decency to take me to the hospital. One of my legs was completely black with ground-in asphalt, and I was feverish and shivering, turning weird colors. They instantly admitted me, and for the next six weeks, my legs were treated with hot salves to draw out the gravel and cement and to debride the destroyed tissue. When they finally got down deep enough, they did skin grafts on my legs, using tissue from my butt. It was a miserably painful experience.

As for my father, he came just once, with his latest female conquest in tow. I passed the time smoking pot that had been prescribed for Larry Flynt, wondering whether my parents were coming back. They weren't. My only loving visitor in those terrible weeks was my dear friend from The Bad News Bears, Walter Matthau.

As I sank deeper into depression, though, I stopped wishing that people would visit me. I was ashamed of the accident, internalizing the notion that I'd brought it on myself and deserved what happened. I felt like the bad seed. Voices kept nagging in my head, mixing my father's words—"You suck,Tatum!"

God awful childhood. Like hearing Walter Matthau of all people tried to be good to her. I didn't know Ryan was that big of a bastard! Is he still living?

Even when I was well enough to move back home, I still had to endure the ritual of bathing my legs in saline solution and changing the dressings, with the help of a nurse. For some reason, having a nurse come in for a few hours seemed to annoy my father, and before I knew it, there was no more nurse.So I had to change the dressings myself and constantly confront the ugly consequences of the accident.

.It was at this point that my father threw a script at me and said, "You could do this piece of shit movie."

. Circle of Two was the story of an artist in his sixties(Richard Burton), who is blocked but starts to paint again after becoming involved with a teenage girl (me). She falls in love with him and tries to seduce him, but he heroically resists.Even so, her parents forbid him to see her, leaving her devastated.The premise of the movie was a little pedophilic and creepy.

Still, I did enjoy working with the legendary Richard Burton.He used to say that he was Dante and call me his Beatrice—which is my middle name—and a "divine enchanting creature."He was a lot of fun.

Richard was under doctor's orders not to drink, but evidently the rule didn't apply to beer and wine, which he drank freely. On the side, we later discovered, he was sneaking shots of hard liquor, which often made him a bit lecherous. When he was drunk, I was no longer just a "divine enchanting creature" but "the most divine enchanting fucking little cunt I have ever seen." He'd beg, "Oh Tatum, come sit on my lap,you divine enchanting little creature."I didn't, of course, but I loved him and learned a lot from working with him.

Carrie and MacKenzie who?

Thanks for posting this, OP.

Ryan O'Neal is still alive. Here he is with Redmond O'Neal, the son he had with Farrah Fawcett.

It's like Donald the Hump as an attractive, successful, and then less successful, actor. Abusive, uncaring, exploitative, cruel, absolutely no appropriate boundaries or parenting going on.

It's weird, I was going to ask the resident DL shrinks and pseudo-shrinks what happens to kids who are raised by sociopaths or similarly personality disordered parents? I guess Tatum and Griffin are what happens. FUBARed for sure.

I always liked Ryan O'Neal on the screen. He's essentially a pretty boy but he's turned in some good performances. Even in this century, I liked him in The Zero Effect. I liked some of his work but I never thought for one moment that he was anything other than a massive cunt.

I knew that Ryan was an asshole and jerk but NOT to this horrible extent. I honestly was fooled by the reality show that Ryan and Tatum did back in 2011, and thought that Tatum was somewhat exaggerating. Until I saw the pictures of Ryan punching Tatum on the beach and then reading Tatum's book. I feel so sorry for Tatum and her brothers.

What an absolute monster Ryan O'Neil is. He doesn't even qualify as human.

Wait, what? Tatum and Ryan O'neal did a fucking REALITY SHOW?

R38 Hahaa, Yes

No, R37, let's not go there because that way lies trumpiness and the Nazis and it's more like O'Neal than his opposite. Ryan O'Neal IS human, that's what makes it so fucking awful. He's human and lots of other unimaginable fucking monsters are also human and also visiting their shit upon us.

They are human and they prey on us.

We WERE FILMING in Toronto. My father came to visit (and did a tiny cameo in the movie as a theater patron), One day when I was in the hotel lobby with my uncle Kevin, I had a celebrity sighting that would change our lives. "Hey, isn't that Lee Majors?" I asked my uncle.It was indeed Lee Majors, TVs Six Million Dollar Man,who was there with his Charlie's Angels wife, Farrah Fawcett.

We started chatting, and they wound up hanging out with my father, who knew Lee from the TV world of the early 1960s. At one point Lee, who wasn't going back to L.A. for a while,asked my father to take care of Farrah.

Bad move! He asked the wrong person. When I flew home after finishing Circle of Two, my father picked me up at the airport. Farrah was in the car.

She and my father had quickly become inseparable. He was always going "up the hill" to the mansion overlooking the Valley that she would wrest from Lee Majors in her divorce.When you entered, you'd have to pass through what we called the Hall of Farrah, where she had hung literally every single magazine cover featuring her. It was profoundly intimidating,like running a Farrah gauntlet.

The two of them spent whole days up at the house exercising and saunaing, drinking their superdiet tea—the perfect cliche of the movie-star life.Griffin and I were used to playing second fiddle to my fathers girlfriends, but now it seemed that we were running ,distant third—behind a woman and a house.

Then my father picked up and moved in with Farrah, leaving Griffin and meat fifteen and sixteen, respectively living on our own.

It wasn't long before he put the house up for sale. Stuck at the beach, Griffin and I contemplated moving to Big Sur. Instead I found an apartment not far from my mother so we could enroll at Hollywood Professional for our last attempt at getting high school diplomas.Eventually Farrah colonized the beach house too, moving the pool table, so Griffin no longer had a bedroom. Of course,there was never any question of making space for us in the vast expanse of Farrah's mansion. I could never figure that out.

My father tried to justify his abandonment by pinning the blame on me. "I had to make a choice between Tatum and this girl, and I chose Farrah," he later told Vanity Fair. "Tatum made me choose. I said that's a bad idea. I sleep with this girl,Tatum, I don't sleep with you." Farrah backed him up, shrugging off my resentment in the press. "We excluded her," she said. "When you're in love, that happens."

We MAINLY SAW my father in command performances at Farrah's—usually competitions on her racquetball court. He'd become fanatical about the game and would viciously play us off against each other or Farrah, while barking from the balcony: "No, no, no! Get in front of her!"It was like a weird, almost sexualized fantasy scene for him—his daughter and his lover scratching and biting like a couple of angry cats on the racquetball court.

All the while he'd be goading me: "Come on, Tatum, she's beating the pants off you. Come on, you little coward!"I could never understand what made him choose that put-down, which became his favorite epithet for me. It was such a harsh word for such a young girl—and for one whose life up to that point would seem to prove that she was anything but acoward.

Racquetball became just another excuse for my father to bully us. Griff and I were always covered with racquet-ball bruises. Once my father pushed me to play so hard against Farrah that I tore some ligaments in my ankle—as if I wasn't scarred up enough. It swelled up like a tree trunk, and I had to be taken to the hospital.

I started to have panic attacks when the phone rang and I heard my father's thundering voice, summoning mo "up the hill." But if I didn't show up, he'd come to the apartment looking for me, screaming my name and banging on the door with his fists while I cowered in the closet.

During all the screaming and hitting and terror competitions, Farrah did not utter a word in our defense.

It didn't make her any more endearing when, one day, my father, with an almost calculated cruelty, said, "Farrah, show Tatum your scar."

She lifted her skirt to reveal a perfect, impossibly thin body, with a super flat tanned stomach and on it a tiny and faultlessly precise white incision. It was a far cry from the ropey keloid scars my body had produced after the accident,and seeing it, I felt even more damaged. Yet Farrah seemed oblivious to my fathers game and to my distress.

I WAS SEEING A psychiatrist during the racquetball era, Dr.Beatrice Foster, who had been recommended by Sue Mengers. She was the first one to hammer it into my head that I didn't deserve the abuse I was getting. At her request, my father came to a session with me, though he made it clear that he considered the process a big joke.

"I made her," he told my therapist, reciting his usual litany."If it wasn't for me, she would never have traveled, never made movies, never met anyone in Hollywood. . . . She would have nothing! And be nothing! Just like her mother!"Having spoken his mind, my father went storming out of the office.

Dr. Foster said, "You need to get away from him,Tatum."I knew it was true. "But how?" I said.

As it was, I was terrified to leave when my session ended. I was sure my father was still outside, pacing and flexing his fists, waiting to torment me for telling our secrets. I've experienced the same emotion while writing this book.

Eventually racquetball would create an unhealable breach between me and my father. I showed up late for a game one day and found him waiting for me, his face twisted with anger. "Where've you been?" he said—and I knew I was going to get it.

I started to apologize, but before I could get the words out,he raised his fist and cold cocked me, right in the head. I collapsed, then picked myself up, ran off the court, and drove away. I vowed that I'd never, ever see him again, and for a few years, I didn't—but I had to endure plenty of punishment before then.

My FATHER TERRORIZED ME, but Griffin was his real whip-ping boy. Everything Griff did seemed to provoke my dad, especially winning at pool. Being an excellent pool player, my father insisted on worthy opposition, but he was also too competitive to tolerate losing. Then he'd often let loose with fists and sometimes even with pool cues.

I remember once coming out of my room at the beach house because my lather was getting beaten and shouting,"Fuck you, Griffin!"—clearly gearing up to Start swinging.I just stood by the pool table and glared at my dad.

My dad turned away from Griffin and said to me, —"Who the hell do you think you are, Joan Crawford?"Then he threw a pool cue at my head, hitting the door frame just above me.

When Tatum's book came out, the Dataloungers asked, Do you think it's true? DUH, it's true.

As for Streisand, their involvement lasted a only few months, though her fans blow it up to gargantuan proportions. Perhaps Babs didn't know/ couldn't fathom that Ryan was seeing numerous other women...they used each other for publicity....score EQUAL.

R40- GETS IT!!!! Listen to R40, my friends.

May god bless you, R40-

Thank you for your divine guidance and wisdom

I love you. LOVE you.

Most of the time, I couldn't protect Griffin from my father. He was always covered with bruises, which he'd account for with crazy stories about falling downstairs with his hands in his pockets. Griffin had been through so much: the ranch,the hard days of living with my mother, buying my dad drugs,and flirting with his own addictions, as well as being a lightning rod for my father s anger.

Then came the day when I got back to the beach house and found my brother frothing at the mouth, in the middle of what looked like an overdose. He refused to go to the hospital and, luckily, came through it okay. That freaked me out—I loved my brother—so I called my therapist, who offered to help get him into treatment. I made the trip "up the hill" to talk to Farrah and my father about putting Griffin into rehab.

Finally they agreed, and Griffin went away to the Habilitat center in Hawaii, where, for a while at least, his self-destructive cycle could be broken.

On a positive note, I had a semi-boyfriend for a while, Anthony Shriver, the son of Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedyand brother of Maria, whom I'd met in Aspen. He was a little younger than me. I always felt self-conscious and unparented around the Shrivers, who were very kind to me. Anthony and I managed to sustain a pretty nice relationship for nearly a year. It couldn't last, of course, but it was a wholesome con-nection at a time when I didn't have many.

I met Tom Cruise at a party at Timothy Hutton's. I had just seen him in Taps.I spent most of the night dancing with Tom—he was a great dancer—and the next day, he called me at the beach house. I was a pretty messed-up young woman at that point,, so I was too disoriented to respond like a normal person.

All I could think of to say was, "Did Tim Hutton give you this number?"I think Tom felt very rejected by that, and he never called me or talked to me again. I've always felt deeply regretful for hurting his feelings—and foolish too, because he was so cute,and I really would have loved to go out with him. But at the time I couldn't quite process the idea that he might be interested.

Both Ryan and Farrah sound like terrible people.

They deserved each other.

....One night when I returned, strung out,from one of my excursions and crashed in my bed, I awoke to find Gavin lying there next to me. I hadn't even heard him sneak in, and I was horrified. All I could do was scream, "Get out, just fucking get out, you crazy pig."

Another time, when I was sleeping late, my father exploded into the beach house. Normally I was pretty good about keeping the place tidy, but I'd been up for a few days, allby myself, doing drugs, and I'd let things go. He yanked me up, shaking me over the mess, as if he were rubbing an animal's nose on a carpet, and then dragged me outside to where my car, a Porsche, was parked.

Snatching open the door, he shoved me in the car, bellowing, "Get the fuck out of here! Go to the rehab with your brother!"Then, with all his might, he slammed the car door on my legs.

I flashed back years to that awful Thanksgiving when my father slammed my mother's car door on her legs and sent her out, drunk, on the Pacific Coast Highway to be arrested. All she had wanted was to share a turkey with her family, and she'd wound up sadistically abused for being weak.

Now the same thing was happening to me.So I knew I had to get out—out of L.A., out of harm's way,out of my father's reach. The time bomb was perilously close to detonation. Then—just seconds, it seemed—before the bomb went off, I met John McEnroe.

OP - who is the "Carrie" that Tatum mentions? Thanks.

R48 I agree, People are fooled by Farrah's nice naive act but she was rotten person just like Ryan, Even after witnessing Ryan abusing his children infront of her, she had no problem having a child with Ryan and look what happened? Her son in jail now.

Is "Carrie" Carrie Fisher? "Mackenzie" Mackenzie Phillips?

Oh, I believe everything she says about Ryan. I watched their reality show and My father was a lot like him. In fact, I think she probably isn’t telling the whole story.

R53 I'm ASHAMED to say that i felt somewhat sorry for Ryan during this reality show and other interviews during this period , I guess malignant narcissists like Ryan can charm and fool people easily. I even thought Tatum was hard on him!!!

R50 R52 It was a friend of Tatum called Carrie Earle.

As horrible as all this is she hints she's leaving a lot out.

Kind of reminds me of that Roman emperor who would have sex with boys and then throw them off a cliff. his minnows he called them.

Life is not nice.

R52 Yes, Mackenzie Phillips.

From Tatum book: "Alone in L.A., I'd been running with an older, somewhat rowdier crowd, including Mackenzie Phillips.. Mackenzie was a regular on the sitcom One Day at a Time and at that point in her life was also heavily into coke."

Tiberius, R56.

"People are fooled by Farrah's nice naive act but she was rotten person just like Ryan"

Ryan is evil, Farrah was just a self-absorbed narcissistic airhead. I've always said this on the DL while her worshipers defended her every actions.

R54 oh, that whole sad sack poor old man routine is an act! They know exactly what they’re doing. He’s not young and gorgeous anymore so he’ll use what he’s got. I used to feel bad for my Dad when he did that because I felt he must be embarrassed But nope all they care about is getting what they want and thinking they got over on someone.

I COULD ALMOST HAVE predicted what happened when John first met my father. We were invited up to Farrah's, where my dad performed a whole macho circling-and-sniffing ritual, grabbing and squeezing John's biceps, then delivering his verdict: "Not very big. You're so skinny."

I was terribly embarrassed, but John wasn't the least bit fazed. He was too confident about who he was and what he was doing in the world to care about being appraised that way.He didn't find my father and Farrah intimidating or even all that impressive.Then, inevitably, my father challenged John to a game of racquetball. Though my dad was very good, the idea of it was ludicrous—imagining that he could beat the number one tennis player in the world at any racquet sport, or even at Ping-Pong.

But John graciously indulged him and handicapped himself by playing right-handed and in his jeans. I couldn't bear to watch—not because I was worried about the outcome but because it was such a blatant display, on my fathers part,of jock competitiveness.John later claimed my dad kept aggressively hemming him in and that he held back, letting my father beat him to avoid a fight.

As I recall, my dad's unsportsmanlike tactics failed and so John wound up the winner. But the truth is, neither of us cared, either way. To John, it was just meaningless backyard play; and for me, it was yet another charade highlighting the reasons I needed to escape my family.

Farrah may not have been cruel, but she did nothing to curb Ryan's own cruelty and abuse.

She didn't even seem to think it was a big deal, apparently.

John McEnroe and Tatum O'Neal were one weird couple. I have no idea how these two could have ended up married. They seemed so totally unsuited to each other.

It was there in Malibu, in September 1985, that I discovered that I was pregnant..... I believed that John's parents didn't respect me because I was a Hollywood actress and, now that we were having a child together, would be upset that I wasn't a practicing Catholic.

John told me not to worry—that we were going to do things our way and that there was nothing his parents could say to us. But he put off telling them until People magazine forced his hand by getting wind of the pregnancy and calling John's mother for confirmation. Still, we tried to preserve our privacy by continuing to deny the rumor to the press.

Then we were outed by, of all people, my father.Earlier that year Farrah had had a baby, my half-brother Redmond O'Neal, and set off a firestorm of controversy by announcing that she and my dad had no intention of getting married. Now it was my dad's turn to blab to the press.

In an appearance on the CBS Morning News, he told the world, "I'm going to have a son-in-law and going to be a grandfather."I was furious at his disrespect for our privacy, especially since we hadn't quite worked out the "son-in-law" part. John had gotten down on one knee to propose to me, and I'd accepted his offer of marriage. He gave me a beautiful engagement ring, but the wedding date wasn't set.

RIGHT AFTER KEVIN was born, both my parents, as well asJohn's, had shown up at the hospital and posed for photos.

My father decided to fly out with Griffin to see the tournament. The two of them wound up practically sabotaging John's chances altogether. First, my father stayed only through the semis, which was like placing a curse on a superstitious athlete. Once again, my dad was totally unsupportive.

Then, when it came to the finals, we left for Queens from Oyster Bay, Long Island, where John and his family had summer houses, and were already running late when Griffin demanded that we turn back to get his contact lenses. John did it, which cost us precious time, then we lost even more getting stuck in the heavy tennis-fan traffic on the freeway.

Because John arrived late, he had little time to stretch and get psyched up for the match. He wound up losing the 1985 U.S. Open to Ivan Lendl—and never again won a major tournament.

The brief thaw in my relations with my family that fol-lowed Kevin's birth couldn't last. The break came a month orso later, when they all arrived for a two-week stay at the McEnroes' Oyster Bay, Long Island, compound. My father and Farrah brought baby Redmond, then about sixteen months old, as well as Griffin and my eighteen-year-old half-brother Patrick, who had befriended John in Malibu.

I put my father, Farrah, and Redmond in the cabana to give them privacy. I could only hope that there would be no dramas and that they'd be respectful guests, remembering that New York wasn't Malibu and that Johns parents, who occupied the main house, were pretty straitlaced.

Sadly, I had no such luck. Pot smoke constantly seeped out of the cabana until it seemed that the entire compound reeked of it. I was so embarrassed.Smoking grass never mellowed out my father, either. He was a tyrant on this trip, stomping out of the cabana and grabbing me to demand, "Who's supposed to be fixing Redmond's baby bottles? Why can't you?"

All I could think was, I'm breast-feeding my six-week-old-son—and I'm the hostess, not your servant."

How is it possible that someone like Roman Polanski comes off better than Ryan O'Neal? Ryan is a piece of shit and I believe every word Tatum says.

Also, I have lost respect for these actresses who dated/fucked Ryan. It was obvious how he treated his children. WTF did they see in him?

I used to love Melanie Griffith but wow. That was low what she did to Tatum.

Where my dad's craziness really erupted was on the tennis court. John was in the city, luckily, so we were able to avoid a repeat of the racquetball face-off. Instead, my dad and I and Griffin and Patrick played a few sets of doubles together,switching off partners. To me it seemed cool to be using the court of the best tennis player in the world.

It was Pat's turn to serve, but the ball glanced off his racket and hit my dad in the back. "Goddamn it," my father howled.He threw his racket and ran at Pat, who jumped over the net, looking for an escape route. When he didn't see one, he just stood there, rocking on his heels as my dad came barreling after him, with his fists up, shouting obscenities.

He stopped just short of beating up Pat, maybe because it struck him that John's parents might be listening. Still, my dad had gone too far for me. Always protective of my brothers,I couldn't stand to see him terrorize them anymore—and certainly not on John's tennis court. He was a guest in our house—my new baby's home—which I wasn't about to let him violate with his rages.

I was sick of feeling bullied and afraid.I decided right then and there that I could no longer tolerate my father—that I was through with him, done!

I was cutting him out of my life. Yet what mattered more to him, because it was such a public snub, was that I cut him out of my wedding.

R66 Ryan even beat up these women and they kept coming for more.

John McEnroe blasts ex father-in-law Ryan O’Neal, calls him a ‘particularly heinous individual’

My grandmother had sent me the wedding dress but was too ill to travel and so was my grand-father, who had Alzheimer's. Since my dad wasn't invited, it must have been too awkward for my half-brother Patrick,who was living with him then, to attend. I believe that Griffin was back in rehab, and I'd lost track of my mother, as I did from time to time when she hit patches of heavy drinking and drugging.

...... In December 1986, Griffin stood trial for reckless and negligent operation a boat and boat manslaughter in the death of GianCarlo Coppola. Fortunately, he was acquitted of the manslaughter charge, which could have sent him to prison for five years. In-stead, he was placed on supervised probation for eighteen months, with drug testing, and required to perform four hundred hours of community service.

Then, in May 1987, the Coppola family filed a civil suit against Griffin and seven other people for negligence leading to the accident.I never heard the outcome of the civil suit, but I was all too aware of my fathers reaction to Griffin's legal problems. "You fucking murderer," he screamed at my brother. "Look what you've done to us." Even on probation, Griffin couldn't seem to stay out of trouble. He kept getting arrested for infractions like drunk driving, possession of drugs, and having a sawed-off shotgun in his car.

John and I helped out with some of his bills, to keep him from being totally under my father's thumb, but I was terrified for Griffin. He seemed to be on a collision course with suicide.

As for my father, I'd managed to resist contact ever since his abusive visit to Oyster Bay. But he'd taken to sending me long, bitter letters, enclosing news clips about himself, as if to prove that he deserved my attention.

I wrote back urging him to get off drugs if he expected to recover a place in my life.Then I started spotting him jogging on the beach—he lived four miles away—always passing our house with his eyes fixed straight ahead.

Softening, finally, I asked him in. He was thrilled to see Kevin, who kissed him. He worked on my guilt about not having him at my wedding to the point that I fantasized about having a second, Los Angeles ceremony where my family could celebrate. Then he wangled an invitation to come back and bring Farrah, whom I didn't especially care to see, and baby Redmond, whom I didn't know at all.

That invitation sparked one of the worst fights John and I ever had. When I asked what he thought, he turned away coldly and, without a word, stalked out of the room. I trailed after him, confused and wanting his advice, but he refused to answer.John's withdrawal opened the floodgates. I burst into tears,and all my months of frustration—of needing John throughout my pregnancy, of feeling overwhelmed by the problems of my brother and parents, of trying to be encouraging and strong but being rewarded with John's accusations or icy silence, of being blamed because John couldn't step up to the plate and take responsibility himself for losing—came streaming out.

I'd been married for less than a year, and I felt disillusioned to the point of hopelessness."I'm leaving," I told him. He didn't react right away. I went downstairs to sleep on the couch, sobbing until he came stomping angrily down the stairs. We launched into an incoherent war of words, screaming at each other until John snatched my arm and yanked it behind my back so hard I was afraid it would dislocate my hand gripping the back of my neck, he shoved me clown onto the conch, smashing my face into the cushions. I had my glasses on, and they were cutting into my eve sockets

I gasped for breath.I freaked out. After growing up with a violent father, nothing terrified me as much as physical brutality. And I was pregnant. "Stop!" I cried. "The baby!"

"You fucking listen to me," John said. "If you try to leave here, you are not taking Kevin or the baby. Do you hear me?Answer the question! You know the kind of assholes who raised you. You wouldn't have a leg to stand on. You'll never get your kids—just try it, Tatum."

I was still shaken the next morning, when John launched into a litany of my failings—what a drain my family was on him, how selfish I was, how I didn't abide by his decisions."You need to follow the leader!" he insisted.It struck me then how much John resembled his father,who to my mind didn't treat his mother with the respect she deserved. If his father was his role model, I had to wonder what that meant for my own future.

As we battled on and off for the rest of the week, I tuned in to the rhythm of despair in John's demands: "Can't you give me some of the love you give to Kevin? He doesn't need it. We can get nannies for him—but I'm your husband." And "Make me happy! Why can't you make me happy?"

Ironically, the catalyst for our terrible fight—a possible visit from my dad—never came to pass. He called and made such provocative, threatening remarks that I slammed down the phone, Then I wrote him a letter thanking him for having the courage to try to reconcile but saying that I wasn't ready—that I still felt the scars of the past too acutely.

Besides, I already had my hands full with John, Kevin, andthe new baby, who'd be coming before I knew it.

"Can't you give me some of the love you give to Kevin? He doesn't need it. We can get nannies for him—but I'm your husband."'

McEnroe sounds as bad as Ryan, one of those narcissistic asshole fathers who doesn't understand that a new baby needs its mother, it's not a PLANT.

'He (Ryan) was a tyrant on this trip, stomping out of the cabana and grabbing me to demand, "Who's supposed to be fixing Redmond's baby bottles? Why can't you?"'

Where was the kid's mother airhead Farrah? Sleeping it off?

My father was still writing me angry letters, accusing me of disloyalty and demanding to see his grandchildren.

When I didn't respond, he resorted to badgering me by phone, slurring his words as he claimed "I don't love you anymore" and insisted that he was a good father because he'd never "slept" with me.

The sheer absurdity of his expecting credit for not being a pedophile convinced me that his drug and alcohol use was completely out of control. I felt profoundly relieved to be thousands of miles from La-la Land.

...WHILE IN MALIBU, I got to know Madonna and her husband Sean Penn.... We bonded when I asked Madonna if she was letting her hair grow, and she said, "Yes—and no more bleach!"The four of us met for dinner at La Scala the very next evening. I loved hearing about the new David Mamet play, Speed-the-Plow, which Madonna was heading off to do at Lincoln Center in New York. She asked me all about my boys, confiding that she and Sean were hoping to get pregnant within a year.

She told me that she never did drugs, apart from occasional grass, and never drank—and it showed. , I was still plagued with a postpartum spare tire,and Madonna offered to set me up with her personal trainer,Rob Parr.

I found her tremendously inspiring. So I was shocked when, a few days later, Madonna told me that Sean Penn was so violent that she sometimes feared for her life.

But in various ways, Madonna was a huge help to me.First of all, she inspired me to get serious about working out— I had grown up in L.A., where being thin and beautiful was all that mattered—to the point that my own mother developed a lifelong addiction to speed trying to achieve that standard. Everyone I knew, including my father and Farrah, was obsessed with weight loss.

"and insisted that he was a good father because he'd never "slept" with me."

OH DEAR!

[quote]At one point my clad hired a weird babysitter to look after us.

Looks like someone scanned pages of the book, and the scanner thought "dad" was "clad".

My workout obsession would eventually take its toll. In years to come I'd wind up needing knee, back, and neck surgery, all because of overexercising.

ONCE I WAS THIN—again, with Madonna's inspiration—I started meeting with agents: John Burnham at ICM, Fred Westheimer at William Morris, and Jane Berliner at CAA. When I got callbacks saying they were interested, I hung up the phone and cried. I was so relieved that someone might actually believe in me and want me. But I was also scared to death.

Early on, I got excited when Dustin Hoffman suggested that I had a shot at playing Iris (Tom Cruise's girlfriend) in Rain Man—not only for the career break but also because working with "Dusty," my girlhood passion, would be fulfilling a lifelong dream. Ultimately, however, it didn't pan out. Other defeats fol-lowed, including Lonesome Dove, Men Don't Leave, and Pretty Woman. I was considered for a couple of plays—Lulu and, thanks to Madonna, Hurly-Burly by David Rabe—to no avail.

.....At that point, I hadn't spoken to my dad in ages, and our last encounter had been heated. He and Farrah co-owned and were costarring in a television series called Good Sports, playing rival anchors on an all-sports network. Real-life athletes including George Foreman and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had appeared on the show, and my father had badly wanted John to do an episode.

When John said no, my father was angry.He'd made no secret of the fact that he hoped the show, which was struggling, would help revive his career.For all I knew, my dad was still fuming about the rejection.Knowing how violent he could be, I was afraid to go over there alone. So I asked John to come with me.

R75, that's something Trump would say.

About five months into my third pregnancy, I got an emergency call from Griffin. He was supposed to babysit for my half-brother Redmond, then six or seven years old. but couldn't make it, for some reason. Since I was nearby in Malibu, he asked me to go over and pick up Redmond at my father's house.

For all I knew, my dad was still fuming about the rejection.Knowing how violent he could be, I was afraid to go over there alone. So I asked John to come with me. "No," he said. "I've got to practice.""Please," I pleaded, "I'm afraid something bad is going to happen."John shrugged, not understanding my fears, and again said no.

Practically shaking, I drove over to my father's house, with my sons in the car, thinking the sight of them might appease him. As soon as the three of us walked in the door, my father came thundering out of his room.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I'm here to get Redmond," I told him." He started manhandling and pushing me, trying to show me out the door. Suddenly I felt a wave of contractions in my womb. I backed out of the house, horrified, sure that I was losing the baby. My sons were crying hysterically, frightened by my father shouting. Then, as soon as I'd gotten them back in the car,Sean remembered the little painted sword he'd brought along to show his grandfather. He had left it in the house.

The last thing I wanted to do was go back in there, but Sean was inconsolable. So I had to face my dad's fury one more time.When he saw I was back, my father started howling, "John should have done Good Sports! Doesn't he know who I am?Doesn't he read Vanity Fair?"My father and Farrah, as well as the show, had recently been profiled in the magazine by Jesse Kornbluth.

As I searched frantically for the sword, my father came at me again, yelling, "Get your brats out of here!"I eased back out of the house and got myself home and to the doctor. Fortunately the baby was okay.

For days, though, I couldn't stop crying, both because of my father's attack and because of John's indifference. How could he have let me go alone? I just couldn't understand it, never mind accept it, and the pain of that abandonment ate away at me. I was so unhappy.

I STAYED BEHIND with the kids in Malibu at one point when John made a trip to the Far East. Flipping through a tabloid paper, I came across photos of John and Billy Joel in Hong Kong, apparently out drinking with some U.S. Marines. In one shot a big hand was grabbing at a lens, and in another John was snatching a camera away from a photographer to rip out his film. There was also a woman in the picture.

I called John right away to see what was up but was determined not to make a mountain out of a molehill."What's going on over there?" I asked."Oh, Tatum, nothing/' he told me. He knew just what I was talking about, though. Was that a sign of guilt?"You, of all people, know how the press is always setting me up.""And that woman . . . ," I said, as casually as I could.John began to sputter defensively, acting offended by my implication and insisting that he had done nothing wrong.

It wasn't impossible to believe. Sure, there were groupies on the tennis circuit and lots of other women eager to throw themselves at any kind of celebrity. John had his faults, but skirt chasing wasn't really one of them—and certainly not the Olympic-caliber womanizing I'd witnessed in Hollywood. John was more earnest—as I was—and more moral.

She said he hit on her at Farrah's wake because he didn't recognize her. Fucked up family

I never thought of Madonna as a kind person, but she certainly showed kindness to Tatum. That poor girl went through fucking hell.

I remember as a young gayling lusting after Ryan in The Main Event

Melanie Griffith sounds like a terrible person, I guess she got the face she deserves

I think Melanie Griffith was really young when she was hanging out with the O'Neals. MG is ~ 6 years older than Tatum. So, if Tatum was around 10, then MG was around 16.

I feel so sorry for all of Ryan’s kids. Wish I could give them all a big hug!

Tippi Hedren sounds like a total failure as a mother. What was she doing while her teenage daughter was fucking everything in sight and doing drugs? Was there no discipline at all, no parental control? That seems to have been the case.

Melanie Griffith couldn't act for shit and after her plastic surgery debacles starting with Bonfire of the Vanities, she became a joke. She kept getting more plastic surgery trying to improve her average looks but in vain.

Honestly, I can’t believe Tatum never killed herself.

I actually newfound respect for Tatum keeping her shit together and not becoming abusive to her own kids. Imagine putting up with abusive father then husband.

So Ryan O'Neal, John McEnroe, and Sean Penn-- all temperamental, violent men... Hmm.

Great thread OP.

Well, Tippi Hedren lived in a fucking zoo. That tells you everything you need to know about how "off" she is.

I like Tatum. She seems like a kind human being, which I think is amazing given how she’s been treated. I hope she’s given up pleasing her dead beat dad and had some happiness in her life.

*has

I hope she will say a lot more one day when Ryan passes away. However, many narcissistic abusers tend to outlive those they’ve abused. What a very tragic and sad story. Poor kids.

I knew Ryan o Neil was a dick but this is insane! Why keep having kids when you hated them?

What was Ryan's upbringing like? Did he experience terrible abuse? Or did he just have borderline personality disorder/ narcissistic personality disorder?

I think of all the terrible Hollywood men I've read about, Ryan O'Neal takes the cake. And I suspect that Tatum isn't telling the whole story, either. I was just reading Mackenzie Phillips' book, and Ryan is even worse than Papa John.

This man, with all his might, intentionaly slammed a car door on his young daughter's legs. Where on Earth does the ability for one to do that even come from? I don't think I could do that to someone I hated, or someone who had harmed me. An innate sense of empathy (imagining how much it would hurt) would kick in and leave me unable to do it. And this is his teenaged daughter!

All of that cdan "Hollywood is one big pedo ring" stuff is complete and utter horseshit. That said, the adults who sat by, and looked the other way, and even enabled Polanski, Phillips', and O'Neal ought to be questioned and held to account for their role. Angelica Houston in particular seems to be one who was well aware of what was happening, and did nothing to help stop it. They speak of her father director John being involved with some wild scenes, so maybe her silence has to do with that. I do not know.

What does O'Neal do for money? He hasn't worked in ages, and I'm sure he's burned through what money he made when he was younger.

One of the funniest bits I ever heard on Howard Stern's show was when he was interviewing John McEnroe, trying to imagine what an ordeal it must have been for John to have a simple dinner with his in-laws.

R85 Tatum said Melanie was 18 years old when she befriended her and fucked Ryan.

R99 Real estate.

Unbelievable interview, among other insane things Ryan said that Tatum had a great childhood because she met Queen Elizabeth and danced with Michael Jackson.

Ryan o'Neal Blames Daughter For Farrah Fawcett's Death

R100 That's what she says to keep from saying her father fucked underage girls. May be she was 18 but maybe she wasn't. Certainly bringing Tatum into bed with him while he makes wild love to his girlfriends is child sexual abuse I would say isn't it? he has no problems with close friends abusing his daughter. Friends who can help him. That's pimping out your child.

Ryan O'Neal should be in jail. It's not too late is it? He's like Bill Crosby.

Bianca Jagger:

In LONDON MY FATHER had become part of a glittering social circle—rock stars, actors, the rich and famous of his generation. One night while I was visiting, I fell asleep at Mick Jaggers, and he carried me out to my fathers car. That was thrilling, but even more than Mick, I loved Bianca. Slim and dark, she was strikingly beautiful, with an incredible, individualistic sense of style.

At an age when I was struggling to figure out my own identity, flying blind without benefit of a mother, I found myself almost magnetically drawn to such strong, stylish, self-possessed women.Bianca intuitively grasped what I needed and indulged me. She let me paw through her closets, admiring her fabulous vintage dresses, and encouraged me to buy a Victorian frock just like one of hers.

She also had a collection of suits and tuxedos, which she wore with a cane, a bowler hat, and tremendous elan. I copied that look myself a little cane and a hat to wear out and about in London, feeling utterly smashing.

At some point my father began an affair with Bianca Jagger. Once, when she was visiting us in L.A., I picked up the phone and heard Mick yell, "Put on your knickers and get out of there!" Then they started speaking French, so I had to hangup. I thought it was interesting that Mick was so demanding,considering how unfaithful he was to Bianca.

Bianca and Tatum

Ursula Andress:

I developed a fondness for a few of our female visitors, all of whom were stunningly beautiful. Tuesday Weld was nice—and somehow my father's friendship with Greg endured despite his affair with her. Lauren Hutton and I sunbathed nude on the beach and went skinny-dipping in the ocean with her fishing net.

Ursula Andress, who dated my father for sometime, wore great short boots with her bathrobe and fascinated me by dry-washing her huge mane of hair with powder shampoo.

Once I got a bad case of poison oak, and she tenderly daubed ointment all over my inflamed body, including my private areas and eyes.

She took a motherly interest in my up-bringing too, scolding my father in her exotic Swiss accent:"Ryan, why, why isn't your daughter in school? She needs to be in school. Ryan, why do you let her sleep in your bed? It's crazy the way you're raising her."

Michael Jackson:

AROUND THE TIME I connected with Melanie, I also made another Hollywood friend, Michael Jackson. I met him at On the Rox, the club Lou Adler and Jack Nicholson opened upstairs from the Roxy on the Sunset Strip. Michael was around seventeen at the time, about five years older than me, and he seemed very sheltered and fearful and lonely—not at all what you would expect a world-renowned performer to be.

As I recall, he didn't even know how to drive a car.He gave me his number, and we started talking everyday—long drawn-out phone conversations that sometimes got so boring that I would hand over the receiver to my friend Esme Gray.

His usual subject was sex. Michael was intensely curious about anything and everything sexual—he was, after all, a teenage guy—though in an incredibly sweet and innocent way.He was a huge star, but it seemed that he'd barely even dated and knew little about life. He once came to my house and asked to come upstairs because he'd never been in a girl's bedroom before.

He sat on my bed, and we kissed very briefly,but it was terribly awkward ."Michael, who was sweating profusely, seemed as intimidated as I was. He jumped up nervously and said, "Uh . . .gotta go."

What we did do together was go to concerts. I remember seeing Queen with Michael at the Forum in L.A., which is interesting, considering his androgyny now. He came with me and my father to Hugh Hefner's mansion, Michael would hangout and jam sometimes with my brother Griffin, who was now living with us and had set up his drum kit in the guest room at the Barrymore house. Griffin was like a musical savant; he played the piano, guitar, and drums beautifully. Michael would play drums, and outside on the deck, my father would he boxing to the rhythm.

Unfortunately, my friendship with Michael came to an abrupt ending. He'd played the Scarecrow in The Wiz, the urban remake of The Wizard of Oz, which starred Diana Ross as Dorothy.

For the film's New York premiere, Michael invited me to be his date. I asked my dad, who didn't care one way or another if I went, but my talent agent Sue Megners was dead set against it. I was told, in exactly these words: "You can't go to a premiere with a n*gger."

Hollywood!That upset me tremendously. Had I been old enough—or had I the parental support—I could have stood my ground and insisted "Oh yes, I can." But my father was too disengaged to help me think it through. So, without telling Michael the reason, I turned him down.

He was devastated. After that Michael didn't speak to me for years, until I ran into him at the Helmsley Palace in New York. For old times' sake, we caught a concert together, Kool and the Gang at Madison Square Garden. Michael dressed in full costume for the event—coming in blackface, with a pasted-on beard—the whole nine yards. But things were never the same between us.

The first time Tatum met Michael jackson

Tatum is good mom to her own tater tots.

Tatum is good mom to her own tater tots.

No wonder Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal were fucking for years.

Barbra defending Michael Jackson pedophilic crimes:

“His sexual needs were his sexual needs, coming from whatever childhood he has or whatever DNA he has. You can say ‘molested’, but those children, as you heard say (the grown-up Robson and Safechuck), they were thrilled to be there. They both married and they both have children, so it didn’t kill them.”

I'm sure Barbra was/is saying the same about Ryan abusing his daughter. That Tatum was thrilled to be around her father and after all, it didn't kill her, she was married and had children!!

Patrick O'Neal defends his father.

My name is Patrick O’Neal, and my father is Ryan O’Neal and I’m here to stick up for my old man. I love him. I always have and I always will.

Tatum wrote a book. I wish she hadn’t. Keep it in the locker-room I say. Griffin has gone on TV talk shows for decades demonizing our father, and has sold countless stories to the tabloids trashing Ryan so that he could profit. To partially quote Michael Corleone from The Godfather, I would tell them, “Tate, Griff, you are my older sister and brother and I love you. But don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever.”

....Sure, I had countless positive influences in my life from my mother Leigh Taylor-Young, the nicest woman in the world, and a great actress to boot, to my grand-parents Don and Pauline and Patsy and Blacky, Aunt Dey and Uncle Lance, and teachers, coaches and counselors. But my dad was my hero.

My parents split up when I was three, but my dad was there to pick me up every weekend. And I couldn’t wait for him to pull up in the Rolls and honk his horn. The coolest man ever. And he was my Dad. Talk about a lucky son.

STFU Patrick, You lived mostly with your mother.

Former Child Star Tatum O’Neal Details ‘Years of’ Sexual Assault And Abuse That Began When She Was 5

R117, Yup. Patrick was raised by his mom, Leigh Taylor-Young, and saw his dad on weekends, so of course, his experiences with Ryan were different. Tatum, Griffin, and Redmond all had to live with that sociopath Ryan, and look how they all turned out. Tatum may seem okay now, but she had to go through so manynyears of therapy.

So who will play Ryan in the "Daddy Dearest" movie version?

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

^Tatum’s a lot better person than I am. I’d let the fucker die on the street for the shir he did.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R116. Patrick is a buffoon. “Keep it in the locker room”? Did he get that safe advice from Joe Paterno?

When a parent is ad abusive as Ryan O’Neal, you mist certainly do take “sides against” them

R121 As someone who has experience with abuse growing up I could totally sympathize with Tatum trying to continue supporting her father even after the shit he put her through. It shows that she's a good person, not a weak one. Not saying that people who cut out their parents from their lives are bad people, it's more nuanced than that. But for those of us who continue to forge some sort of relationship, it's due to many things, one is that we choose to sometimes focus on the good in that parent, we remember the glimpses of their humanity or vulnerability that explains (but not entirely) why they behaved the way they did. It's hard to put into words, but I think it's also not the place for others to judge why people like Tatum should want to be there for their emotionally abusive parents. She's old and wise enough to realize what is emotionally healthy for her at this point. Perhaps reaching out and being there for Ryan is her way of healing. Writing her memoir has been extremely helpful, the way that I encourage my therapy patients to keep a journal as we go along.

R125 I'm not judging Tatum at all, I admire her strength but I just feel sorry that she has been trying her whole life to have a good relationship with her psychopath father.

Ryan and Farrah made Whitney and Bobby out to be the Huxtables.

Patrick O'Neal is pathetic.

Patrick O'Neal: Thank-you Chris! Nobody better than you to tell my positive story about my father and my love for him. I challenge @latimes to tweet out this story so others can see the good in my Dad for a change. RT plz @erskinetimes

Ryan O'Neal Twitter

Ryan and Tatum don't follow each other. He only follows Patrick and always posting about his love for Farrah and retweeting Patrick's tweets.

Ryan follows Melanie Griffith on Twitter and doesn't follow his daughter Tatum. SMH

She still wants to believe deep down he loves her. Well she hasn't been helping her cause writing all this deeply ugly stuff getting back at him. But she still wants him to love her. Though he never will. It makes no sense but it's understandable.

No wonder Farrah got asshole cancer. Karma.

Wow, Patrick sounds like an asshole just like his father.

I'm glad I was a fairly boring teenager.

I heard years ago that Ryan lives off of money from investments in trailer park properties, he's living just fine, not super wealthy but comfortable. I think he also got some money or valuable items from Farrah after she died, or is controlling them for Redmond who's been in jail or rehab more years in his life than not. All of Ryan's kids have issues, either psychological or behavioral or substance abuse. Patrick is the outlier but he lived with his mom, and he's the one now trying to curry favors with dad by saying nice shit about him. Maybe he's hoping to inherit than trailer park money from Ryan when he dies.

Farrah comes across as an enabler, an airhead who chose not to see reality and instead lived in her own world where she's the center of the universe fawned over by men. She's the type of woman who'll look the other way as long as her man is doing just enough to keep her happy. But even she had enough of Ryan after he cheated on her too many times.

Angelica Houston has no problem with Polanski raping a child, Or with Ryan mistreating his daughter. However she's still angry at Ryan for beating her up.

Anjelica Huston reveals some surprising anecdotes in her new book, Watch Me — one of which is an account that former boyfriend Ryan O'Neal assaulted her at a party until she "saw stars." In the memoir, Huston recalls walking from the bathroom to the dining room of a Beverly Hills mansion to avoid crossing paths with a belly dancer, when "he turned on me, grabbed me by the hair and hit me in the forehead with the top of his skull," she writes. "I saw stars and reeled back. Half blind, I ran away from him." When she later followed her boyfriend into the bathroom to speak with him alone, "no sooner had I complied then Ryan was in the bathroom, batting me about the head with open hands. Then, abruptly, he left."

The actress reiterated during a Monday morning appearance on Today that she ended the relationship with O'Neal immediately after the assault and explained of exposing the violent memory. "It's my feeling that any man who lifts a hand against a woman deserves to be outed, so I'll leave it at that."

In the book, Huston also breaks her silence on director Roman Polanski's sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson's house. She told Savannah Guthrie of being elsewhere on the property at the time. "So far as I'm concerned, whatever happened is his business, and I wasn't there for any untoward behaviors, and I can say that with some happiness."

Farrah's looks and behavior went downhill after many years in that abusive household. Her face looked like it had been battered one too many times, and the misshapen nose may have been from cocaine abuse or Ryan's pugilistic handiwork.

Anjelica Huston even claimed being assaulted by Ryan. Awful man.

Sorry, R136, I didn't see your post before I posted.

R136 There are many women still defending Polanski. Off-topic but it's relates to how Ryan is still able to do his schtick as loving partner of dead Farrah the brave almost-survivor who put up a great fight against cancer. These women are fucked up with mental health issues of their own, personality disorders are rampant in Hollywood. Going back to Polanski, you have Mia Farrow defending her "friend" still as oh no biggie he raped and had sex regularly with young girls. Mia meanwhile has been outed as an abuser herself by 3 of her adopted children one of whom died from AIDS destitute and without any help/ contact from Mia. Mia, Woody, there are so many other nut job celebrity parents. So many mommy-dearest or daddy-dearest stories that we haven't even heard about.

I don't feel sorry for Ryan's girlfriends at all.

The sex must have been amazing. All these women begging this man with ice water in his veins to be abused again and again. Pathetic. But that's what sex reduces people to.

Why did not one man ever kick this guy's ass good? Are there no actual men in Los Angeles? He needed his ass beat so bad, shame no one gave him that ass-beating.

Everyone in Hollywood Knew how abusive Ryan was , his reputation was well known. Yet, the women pathetically chased after him for sex and kept coming back even after being beaten up and treated cruelly.

Andy Warhol wrote in his diary that Ursula Andress's arm was broken and everyone in LA thought that " Hurricane Ryan' was the .reason.

People will put up with a lot for that momentary high of feeling loved and wanted by an incredible lover.

Somehow, I just can't see the possibility that this whack job, Ryan EVER tried his shot with Diana Ross or Babs Streisand.

[quote]Somehow, I just can't see the possibility that this whack job, Ryan EVER tried his shot with Diana Ross or Babs Streisand.

Both Babs and Diana were on equal footing with Ryan. They were superstars same as him, so he probably didn't think he could bully them.

Also, I have a feeling that both of them went in for the sex and then got up and went home. They didn't really stick around and cling to him. Diana tried, but as Tatum says, Ryan never took her calls. So because they weren't as clingy, they didn't get the physical abuse.

Tatum said that Ryan treated Diana Ross cruelly but I don't know if he beat her up, won't be surprised if he did.

R97, unbelievable as it seems, Ryan comes from a stable upper middle class family. He (and his brother Kevin) acts like he grew up on drug infested streets.

"No wonder Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal were fucking for years."

R114, make that a couple of months. Streisand fans (and the movie magazines at the time) make such a big deal about this short affair that ended shortly after the filming of What's up Doc began. They want the "ugly duckling and golden boy" crap.

"I developed a fondness for a few of our female visitors, all of whom were stunningly beautiful. Tuesday Weld was nice—and somehow my father's friendship with Greg endured despite his affair with her. Lauren Hutton and I sunbathed nude on the beach and went skinny-dipping in the ocean with her fishing net..."

I realize Tatum was looking for a mother figure, but since she recently half way came out of the closet, these passages are much more loaded. Lez Lauren Hutton coould probably tell that Tatum was a baby dyke.

What about Ursula patting her with the oil. An obviously intimate fond memory.

Ross was always tricky, and utterly career focused. She was using him as much as he was using her. No matter - after O'Neal, it was on to the next Hollywood man whore.....

That's W Beatty behind her.

.....and the next.....

Diana dating a white man or two or three or... and according to Tatum, another white man to marry. Sounds like Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll and others decades before her. Lena wised up and got herself a white gay man for marriage.

R148, upper middle class doesn't mean there wasn't dysfunction. Addicts come from a background of abuse and trauma. Wouldn't surprise me if Ryan had been physically and or sexually abused. Probably was raised in a household that had substance abuse issues.

Angelica Houston said in her biography book "Watch me" that at the time she was dating Ryan O"Neal, she thought that Ryan and Tatum had an weird close relationship and she was more like his girlfriend.

R155 That's because Ryan didn't set any boundaries as the parent in that relationship.

This thread makes me want to watch "Paper Moon" again, only this time with the eye of a hawk. I'm sure that it must be free streaming somewhere.....

R99 No need to worry about his finances, as he inherited Farrah's art collection. He also recently won a suit to keep the Warhol portrait of her. (despite her bequeath) It is estimated to fetch $20-24M. He plans to send it to auction, and it has been publicised his reserve is $18M.

DUH, R154, but Ryan still acts like he's a lower class street punk. I seriously doubt he was abused sexual or otherwise when he was a kid even if his parents (to whom he was close) were raging alcoholics. Ryan is a lot, but he's not a pedophile. He probably didn't become a drug abuser until the 1970s when it was hard not in Hollywood.

R155, people said the same thing about Sinatra and daughter Nancy.

There were two Warhol Farrahs; supposedly in her will they were both supposed to go to the University of Texas, but O'Neal got his mitts on one and went to court to claim ownership. This was after he learned that the bulk of her dough was to be held in trust for that felon son and he was not getting anything. What a sleazebag.

I've never read anything by the Sinatra children that said that their father was abusive both verbally and physically towards them. Let alone to the insane level Tatum talks about.

And the Griffin interview on Larry King is another whopper. Ryan sounds like he should win worst father in the history of the world award.

No, R56, you have it wrong. This came from Suetonius:

"For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles. Unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction."

Tiddlers= "minnows." Even so, remember that Suetonius is considered a gossip and not on the level of a historian such as Tacitus. He is taken with a large grain of salt, though his writings still have value to us.

R161, what the fuck do the Sinatra children have to do with this?

Why are earth did all those women go to bed with Ryan O'Neal? He really wasn't that great looking and he had a repellent personality. So why fuck him? Because he was a rich movie star? A lot of his lovers were famous and rich themselves, so why go to be with the nasty creep? I just don't get it.

Diana Ross grew up in the Projects. She knew her away around an abusive man.

"Why are earth did all those women go to bed with Ryan O'Neal?"

If you saw him in interviews or game shows in the late 60s early 70s, R164, you'd see he had a fab sense of humor and a lot of charm, much more than sullen, quiet Warren Beatty. That's how he got famous women. Plus, according to Joan Collins, O'Neal was an awesome lover (read: he was good and generous at oral sex).

Narcissists are all overwhelming charm and compliments that turn your head...until they feel sure they've got you. That's when the monster emerges. There's even a name for it: lovebombing.

He must have been the fuck of the century.

[quote] Angelica Houston said in her biography book "Watch me" that at the time she was dating Ryan O"Neal, she thought that Ryan and Tatum had an weird close relationship and she was more like his girlfriend.

In Tatum's book she wrote of a time when her grandmother asked her if she was having sex with Ryan and Tatum didn't seem offended or disturbed by the question; it came across like a humblebrag.

R169 No, Tatum was disturbed by her grandmother's suggestion

That's what Tatum wrote from R11 :

"With typical loyalty to my dad, my grandmother turned on me. "Your father didn't do anything wrong," she said. "It was you who created this whole scene. You're in love with Ryan. Did you sleep with him?"

Of course I hadn't—my father was not a pedophile—but it shocked me to think that if he had been, my grandmother would have blamed me, the child. That realization showed me once and for all that there was no one I could count on—not my mother or my grandmother—not then and not ever."

R167 Exactly, They are VERY Charming and dangerous at the same time.

R164/R168 I've often wondered if he had an enormous cock TBH. All the money in the world wouldn't seem worth the abuse and shame.

Angelica Huston sounds like a piece of work. She seemed to have no problem hanging around with men who hooked up with young girls or pimped out young girls, including their own daughter.

Funny how a teenaged Tatum was accused of sleeping with Ryan but not Ryan not being a father and protecting his child. The old motto of the girl being the tease and seductress. Angelica certainly got the face she deserved.

Apparently R172 apparently didn't read R166. "Enormous cock" had nothing to do with a woman's pleasure out side of PORN.

R167 Cults also use the technique of lovebombing. Many abusive relationships start off that way.

"The old motto of the girl being the tease and seductress."

That's they way it was thought until very recently - in minds and in THE COURTS

R174 I did read that post, but I STILL wonder about the size of his endowment.

More from the book:

LATE IN OCTOBER, I was asked to host a benefit screening in New York for The Last Party, a documentary about the Democratic convention made by my friend Donovan Leitch,the son of the singer-songwriter. It featured Robert Downey Jr.as sort of a Michael Moore character, interviewing both ordinary and famous people, ranging from Jerry Falwell to Spike Lee, about the political process. The film was barbed and funny, and I was delighted to get involved, never suspecting the reaction I would get from John.

He seemed jealous, not only because I was doing some-thing on my own, with new friends whom he didn't know, but also because he hadn't been asked to be a cosponsor. Wasn't he, after all, the bigger celebrity in the family?Since he'd just come in off the tour the week before, I doubted that he'd even want to come to the screening. But he clearly did, so I invited him.

We had a tolerable time, though a bit tense, and came home early. I was in my bathroom at the penthouse getting undressed when John came barging through the door. I always hated that, and he knew it. When he was in a bullying mood,he made a point of violating my privacy.

"Can you please knock?" I asked.

"Excuse me? Knock?" he said.

"No, I can't. This is my fucking house. If you don't like it, yon can gel the hell mil.'

"What?" "

"Get your fucking shit and get the fuck out of my house.'Grabbing my arm, John yanked me out of the bathroom. As I tried to pull my clothes together, he flung my purse at me.The apartment was very large, four floors overlooking Central Park. Slapping at me, he shoved me toward the stairs.

"What the hell are you doing?" I protested.He started pushing at me, kicking me, until I stumbled backward and started slipping down the staircase. All I could think of was Kevin sleeping in the next room. If he opened his door, he'd see his mother tumbling down the stairs and hear his father railing, "You fucking bitch! Who do you think you are?"

"John . . . ," I pleaded.I scrambled to my feet and backed down the stairs as John came raging after me.

"Remember what you were when you met me? You were nothing! And look at you now! Look what I've done for you! You should respect me."

He was ringing changes on the same old tune I'd always heard from my father: "I made you. You were—are—nothing without me."I wasn't going to hear it anymore.

He grabbed at me but I pulled out of his grasp.I'd reached the front door and had my hand on the knob."Where the fuck are you going?" John demanded."I'm out of here, John. I've leaving you.""You wouldn't dare."

I didn't answer. I was gone!

Sure R177, but that "attraction" would be a gay male thing.

As soon as the word got out, everyone in my life started weighing in with opinions. My mother was horrified at the thought of my leaving John. Her own life had been such a struggle that she urged me to stay married, if only for the money. "For Gods sake," I said, "I'm not a high-class whore, Mom.'

Behind my back, she'd telephone John, which drove me crazy—she was such a conniver that I couldn't even guess what game she was up to—and warned me that he'd put a"tail," a private detective, on me. Whether that was true or not—and I came to believe that it was—her meddling was very destructive.

I knew it was inevitable, but I hated the thought of losing contact with John's mother, for whom I had genuine affection and respect. I soon started catching a whiff of attitude from some of his other family members and friends, to the effect that: "Tatum's nothing but a spoiled movie star—not even a practicing Catholic—so what do you expect?"

That's when some advice from my "guru," Vivian Kubrick,got me into trouble. Vivian was on a mission to bring truth into all relationships. Her mantra was "risk getting real."

And I got "real," unfortunately, with John, confessing my one-shot affair, explaining what I'd gained from it, and even naming the man.I pointed out that John himself once had an affair—or at least once that I knew about—that time in Hong Kong with Billy Joel.

This time he didn't deny it. "But it's not the same at all,Tatum. That was just sex. You had feelings for the guy.""That's the difference between men and women," I tried to tell him. "Is it better—less of an infidelity—if it's just sex?"

I honestly—and foolishly—believed that my confession would clear the air, make John see the error of his ways and realize how unhappy I'd been in our marriage, help establish anew dialogue between us, etc.—all the benefits that Vivian,who was equally naive, attributed to "getting real."

That's not what happened, of course. Instead, John immediately cut off all my bank accounts and credit cards. Barely a month after we separated, we were careening toward divorce court. The high-powered McEnroe machine—a huge legal juggernaut—was speeding straight at me. I didn't even have a lawyer. I had "risked getting real" and now I risked getting splattered.

Oh God, I can't wait to find out what happens next.

THE DIVORCE HEADLINES, of course, drew the attention of my father. Against my better judgment, I accepted his invitation to bring my kids and join him, Farrah, and Redmond on a vacation in Hawaii at the end of the year. As a buffer I brought along my old friend Esme Gray, hooking up with her in San Francisco so we could all fly together .

In my bag I had a script for a TV miniseries, Woman on the Run, based on the true story of a wrongfully accused killer,Lawrencia "Bambi" Bembenek. For all the uproar in my personal life, I had continued to audition. Days before we left for Hawaii, I got the job.I was ecstatic.

I was so pleased with Woman on the Run that I made the mistake of discussing it with my father. Even though we'd been estranged and were supposedly trying to bury the hatchet—and even though I was trying to reorient myself in the midst ola painful, public separation—he played on my vulnerability.

"Tatum, there's no way you can carry a whole miniseries,'he told me. "I'm going to get involved and help you out.'It was just like the old days, when my father would show up on a set and start bossing me around, contradicting the director, because he couldn't stand my working independently. He had already total control of Farrah's career.

"Dad, no," I protested. 'This role means a lot to me, and Ineed to work it out on my own."He couldn't resist going for the jugular.

"But, Tatum—you suck! You're a terrible actress!"I hated him!Things didn't improve during the rest of our time together.

After druggy nights, my father would sleep past noon and be ultra volatile during his waking hours. One day we were tossing around a Frisbee on the beach, and little Kevin threw it into the water. My father went wild. He started chasing after Kevin, and I had to snatch both my sons out of his reach.

"Don't you dare lay a hand on one of my kids," I told him."If you ever touch one of them, I'll kill you."

"Oh yeah?" he said. He backhanded me across the face."Who's gonna kill who?"

It made me sick to hear him screaming at my half-brother Redmond. Poor Redmond! I wrote. What a screwed-up existence—exactly the life I led but without a Farrah in it. . . .

When my dad had invited me to Hawaii, I'd allowed my-self the fantasy—which I desperately wanted to believe—that maybe now my family would "circle the wagons" around me,love, support, and help me through the breakup with John. In-stead I felt blindsided, kicked while I was down. I vowed, yet again, never to speak to my father.

JOHN HAD THREE BIG BOXES of my belongings sent over to East End Avenue. Opening them, I discovered that a precious box Lucy Saroyan, the daughter of Carol and Walter Matthau,had made for me when I was eight years old was completely smashed. I cried and cried—that was such a potent symbol of loss, of shattered dreams.

John had phoned me a few times in Hawaii, raging and calling me names. But it was still both traumatic and frightening when, on January 8, 1993, he filed for divorce. It was the point of no return, when I had to acknowledge that my life with John, the father of my children, in whom I'd invested such great hope and profound, all-consuming love, was finally over. I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Divorce DEFINITELY BRINGS out the worst in people, That summer and the next, when I rented houses in the Hamptons, I watched in dismay as all our art-world friends chose sides. Since John was the wealthy partner in our marriage, most of them aligned with him. That made me feel like the ' odd girl out"

I also think John played the pity card, casting himself in the role of the abandoned husband, while I didn't really try to court sympathy from anyone. Even my household staff began to defect, following the money. At least I could hire new nannies and cleaning ladies.I couldn't replace people like my half-brother Patrick, who had become part of John's posse and, after writing me a scathing letter, actually moved into the house John and I had shared in the Malibu Colony.

That hurt—not only to be abandoned by my own flesh and blood but also to have Patrick living, surrounded by my possessions, in a place I'd personally renovated from scratch yet stood some chance of never seeing again.

Los Angeles was my birthplace, my original home, a place I'd introduced to John. I didn't expect him to claim it as his own.

Cher, among others, urged me to fight for the Malibu house. She also counseled, "Don't let him take your jewelry.""Oh, he wouldn't do that," I said.I was so trusting, at the beginning of our wrangling, that the prospect never even occurred to me. I was the mother of John's children. I believed that John would honor our history. It wasn't just me who had failed as a spouse. The truth was that neither of us knew how to build a loving marriage.

ONE MAJOR NIGHTMARE was the prenuptial agreement,which I'd signed under duress right after Kevin was born. Under its provisions, I had no right to any property—not the New York apartments, not the house in Sun Valley, and not the house in the Malibu Colony. When I tried to reason with John about making some deal that would allow me to reoccupy the house in California—if only to give the kids some continuity—he blew me off.

"Don't blame me if you and your lawyer were stupid enough to sign the prenuptial agreement," he said,before slamming down the phone.Nor, apparently, was I entitled to keep any of the jewelry he'd given me or any of our cars—we had five—including my own.

All I was permitted to take out of a six-year marriage was the money I came in with—unless, of course, John felt like being generous. He really wasn't in the mood.A cannier, more manipulative woman would have mapped out her exit strategy before taking a stand against unhappiness.

A woman like Madonna, for example, who called when she heard the news of my divorce to inquire, "So, what did you get?"

But I wasn't that kind of woman. I'd hired a lawyer who had represented lots of famous people, who thought my case was a lost cause, so I replaced him with William Beslow,whom I had met while making Woman on the Run. He seemed to think we could put up a fight. The truth was, ultimately, that I didn't care about the property and money as much as I wanted to be treated equitably and with respect.

However, there was one thing I cared about deeply—really the only thing that gave my life meaning, as John well knew—and that was my kids.

R183 ["But, Tatum—you suck! You're a terrible actress!"]

Why couldn't Tatum have responded, "But I have an Oscar!. Do you???"

Odd, because I remember McEnroe stating a=that he felt Tatum should have "gotten more" than what was in the prenup. she deserved more $, he said. Cunning bullshitter.

R187 If Tatum said that, Ryan would have killed her right then and there. No kidding

As someone once said to me, "John doesn't have to win, he has to destroy you—to obliterate his opponent."I came very close to destruction, partly because of John's infinitely superior legal firepower, but also, I must confess, be-cause of my own actions.

ONCE I WAS ON MY own and dating again, I found myself drawn to men who were the polar opposite of John. Early on, the men I got involved with were often European and younger than me—among them, a handsome French actor named Daniel, from a talented and sophisticated family,and a tall German guy with long, blond hair whom I visited in Munich. The one who finally captured my heart was a soulful,young art-world apprentice. I'll call him "Sal."

.....Sal had also confessed that he was a junkie. He told me all about his introduction to smack and about running away from rehab at age eighteen. It was this dark mystique that seemed to make heroin so appealing to many in the art world—and even considered chic—in New York in the 1990s. .At that point, I was just getting reacquainted with drugs myself. John's cure had actually worked. When I'd met him,I'd had an undeniable coke dependency, but I'd cleaned up completely when we started trying to conceive Kevin.

Now that John was keeping my children for long stretches—two weeks at a time—there was a vacuum in my life that I was desperate to fill. Maybe there are people who get hooked on drugs—painkillers, for instance—purely by accident. In my case, however, there were reasons: no doubt some kind of family predisposition but, even more, a profound self-loathing and sense of worthlessness instilled over many years of abuse and neglect.

By now John had gotten wind of our relationship, and it seemed to upset him. We fought about it on the phone, and Sal overheard my side of the conversation.

When I hung up,he grabbed the phone from my hand and called John back. "If you're going to talk about me, do it to my face," he said. That shut John up, .I felt so protected.

^ I wonder bout the women Tatum is leaving out of the stories...hmm.

Nolan Miller on dressing Tatum for the Oscars

Sal started telling me stories about friends of his who were shooting heroin......It was the beginning of the end—of trying to die again.

Sal AND I were together for more than a year. He even asked me to marry him. That spring, however, while John had the children, we went on vacation with some artist friends. It was then that I noticed fresh needle marks on Sal's arms.Drugs had quickly become an important element of our relationship.

I had no idea how ravaging—physically, mentally, and emotionally—the drug could be. I had started craving it psychologically, longing to sink into oblivion. I had to take action. I broke up with Sal, for good.Then I checked myself into Beth Israel Hospital to detox. I was put on antidepressants, which seemed to help, but in the therapy aspect of treatment, I wasn't yet able to reach out to people.

DURING MY TIME WITH Sal, I'd continued to look for work.....It would have been even harder to do The Quest with Jean-Claude Van Damme, which was to be shot in Thailand and required a four-month commitment. My agent advised against it, thinking it was a bad career move for me to make a martial-arts action movie.

Still, I badly wanted some kind of film role,if only for the money, and Jean-Claude strung me along for months, assuring me that I was his first choice.At the end of 1994, he asked me to meet him at the bar of the Peninsula Hotel in L.A. He was in the process of divorcing his wife and was sitting with a woman who I assumed was his date.

Then, when I asked him if we could step outside to talk business, he began flirting with me wildly, telling me how expressive my eyes were but that I looked too pale—he wanted me to spend a month walking in the mountains before we starting shooting the movie together, to build up my strength.

He was a charmer, all right.I wound up having a brief fling with him. He told me tha the loved me and would never hurt me, that he needed to take care of me and even wanted to go on a ski trip with me so our kids could play together.

He promised to call me the following week, when he would be in New York.But he didn't. Instead, four days later, he left a message with my agent, claiming that he was no longer sure he wanted me for the movie.

What a relief! What was I thinking? I asked my diary. It was having the carrot—the hope of working—dangled in front of me for so long that had held my interest, not the role itself,which would have been a professional disaster.

As for our personal connection, I'm not sure that I could really have found happiness with the man who spoke of himself, using his initials, as the "third biggest star in the world": "The first is loin [Cruise], the second is Arnold [Schwarzenegger], and the third is me, JCVD!"

A few months later, I was honored with a Best Actress award for Woman on the Run at the Monaco film festival. That led to a curious brush with royalty. Prince Albert wined and dined me, inviting me to meet him not at the palace but at his"ladies' flat' the special apartment he maintained for his mistresses. When I walked in, I was shocked to see an auto-graphed photo of Farrah hanging on the wall. It was not anaphrodisiac.

He got as far as removing my dress, then vanished into the bathroom. As I lay on his bed, I could hear him brushing his teeth, coughing, and spitting in the sink. That did it for me.

I jumped up, yanking my clothes back on, and called out some lame excuse about having forgotten my contact lenses. Then I fled into the night, running all the way back to my hotel, as if the palace guards were hot on my heels.That was my almost-dalliance with a real prince!

My relationship with John was more of a struggle than ever because he'd just settled down with a new woman, the rock singer Patty Smyth. She and her daughter were living with John—and during his "two weeks on," my kids—and now she was pregnant. Patty had a temperament that was similar to John's—intense, driven, and determined to win, which, of course, made me, John's ex-wife, the loser.

So I started slipping again. During the half of each month when John had the kids and I was alone, filled with despair, I started calling contacts downtown, who would deliver drugs to my house. Nothing seemed to ease my terrible emptiness and pain as well as snorting heroin.Yet I never embraced drugs as a way of life and kept on trying to get clean.

John celebrated the new year, 1996, with the birth of a new daughter, who'd come seven weeks early. I spent the holidays in rehab, alone, having checked myself in at Hazelden in Minnesota.

As if I needed a reminder of why I was an addict, my father called me on Christmas Day—not to offer seasons greetings but to tell me, yet again, "I just don't like you, Tatum."

Cher—who I still love—cheered me on from the sidelines,telling Entertainment Weekly, "Anybody can hit a bump. It doesn't mean they can't straighten up and fly right. I know Tatum will."I would—but it would take a while.

When I got out, John made me submit to a regimen of constant drug tests, to prove that I was staying clean .Still, I did it for the kids—determined not to lose custody—and for a year and a half managed to fend off my lethal urges.

"A cannier, more manipulative woman would have mapped out her exit strategy before taking a stand against unhappiness. A woman like Madonna, for example"

I bought an apartment on Central Park West that had belonged to Michael J. Fox. It was close rto the children's schools, as well as to John's apartment, which I hoped would ease their transitions between households. I felt good about putting East End Avenue, with all its unhappy associations, behind me.I even hooked up with a boyfriend who was relatively sane,a New York firefighter.

Then, toward the end of 1997, my house of cards came crashing down. There was a terrible crisis, involving my mother. I HAD BEEN SUPPORTING her since I was in my teens. In the mid-1990s, I was giving her $2,000 a month just for living expenses, as well as paying her bills. However, when I realized that she was not only drinking but also back on amphetamines, I told her that I was not willing to bankroll her drug habit.

I felt justified in my decision when she had five arrests for "driving under the influence" in quick succession.Then, not long after I cut her off, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her entire life, she had smoked with the same huge enthusiasm she devoted to everything else—laughing,cooking, singing, entertaining, and, of course, boozing. Now it was killing her.

I didn't even know until the day she called me in New York and said, "Tatum, I have two months to live'1 felt responsible, as my withdrawal of support had sent her spiraling downward. Of course, I was also devastated by the prospect of losing her. Whatever else she may have been, she was my mother, the giver of life—and the bond between us was primal and unshakable.

I flew out to see her a few times during my "two weeks off," when John had the kids. She was fading fast. Shortly after my thirty-fourth birthday, I rented a house in Indian Wells so I could take her out of the hospital, to be cared for.

I sat beside her, holding her hand, weeping with remorse over every time I'd scolded her, telling her over and over how much I loved her, though I wasn't sure she could hear me.Now and then, a friend of hers would drop by, but most of the time it was just the two of us. Griffin wasn't around because he was using heavily and couldn't cope with the tragedy.

Once my father called, in tears, and I put the phone next to my mothers ear so he could say good-bye. That broke my heart.

I called John when my mom seemed close to the end, and it is a measure of how ugly things had gotten between us that he was unmoved. He said, "When does the statute of limitations run out on my feeling sorry for you?"

"John, she's dying!" I insisted. "I just want you to tell the kids."

"Bullshit," he said. "I can hear her laughing."

She was wheezing, desperate for breath. That night, while I was asleep in her room, she called out to me, afraid. I crawled into bed beside her, just as I had done when I was little, and lay there to give her comfort.The next day, November 23, 1997, I cried alone as she died in my arms. I still have not come to grips with that.

WTF did she see in John aside from the fame and $$? He was such an asshole.

R173, Anjelica tolerated that kind of behavior from men because it was what she grew up with. Her father, John, was a heavy drinker, gambler, hunter, and serial womanizer. Growing up at St. Clerans in Galway, Ireland, she witnessed her father's numerous ex-wives and girlfriends drop by for visits and she discovered that practically all the young women at St. Clerans whom she considered her friends had slept with her dad.

Tatum should have just shot and killed her entire family (Farrah and John included) and then turned the gun on herself and put us all out of her misery.

Even then, instead of sitting the kids down and explaining her death, as I'd asked, John took them swimming at Reebok,his health club, and told them in the pool. That made me furious. Unlike my father, whom they'd rarely met, my children knew and loved my mother.

Once again, I took complete responsibility. I made arrangements for the funeral at a church that had a nice out-door space. Afterward, Griffin and I took my mother's ashes back to Americus, Georgia, where she was born.

LOSING MY MOTHER threw me into more of a tailspin than I ever anticipated. John wanted to take the kids to Malibu for Christmas, so I decided to go too and stay in a hotel, so I'd have the chance to see them. I was yearning for a sense of family and even thought it might be possible to reconcile with my father. He'd seemed kinder when my mother was dying and more vulnerable too, because he had split up with Farrah—this time for good—after seventeen years of mutual torment.

But when it came to my family, nothing was ever as it seemed. It started out fun: The kids are getting a dose of O'Neals that they have never gotten before, I wrote. They are having a blast!It wasn't long, however, before I recognized that Griffin was badly strung out, that my father was still very heavily into pot, and so was my half-brother Redmond—only thirteen years old.

My father was bullying Griffin and Redmond and started in on me just a few days after Christmas .

At that point I'd been clean for a year and a half. In the few weeks since my mother's death, I'd taken a breather from my twelve-step meetings, so I was very vulnerable and being in this trigger house—my father's place in Malibu. I started out drinking and soon progressed, for the first time, to shooting heroin and coke. Clearly I wasn't coping too well with the loss of my mother.

Griffin, who used speed and coke, smoked crack, and drank, thoughtfully introduced me to a product that allegedly made your urine test clean for any drug. Still, I was way too scared to rely on it. The idea of failing a drug test just freaked me out too much

r201 = Ryan

However, a few months passed before I was truly ready to stop and get myself back into rehab.BEFORE I DID, the unthinkable happened—an incident that still fills me with profound shame.

It was seven-year-old Emily, my baby, who came to my bedroom one night and found something I never wanted her to see: a syringe. When that got back to John, he pounced on it. Now, along with the drug tests, I had to endure the indignity of supervised visits, with John controlling the schedule.

I cant say that I wouldn't have reacted the same way if I thought for an instant that my children were imperiled. However, I believed—naively—that John knew me and recognized my absolute commitment to motherhood. He knew that,whatever had happened, my children loved me and wanted to be with me—and that I needed them. I thought that even the courts would acknowledge that and give me a little credit for being a good mother and for fighting so hard to get clean.

But drug use was demonized in New York, more so than in California. Nobody gave me credit—especially not judges. I didn't stand a chance......

In May 2001, my father started having stomach pains.He went in for tests, which showed that his white cell count was sky-high. He was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. The press couldn't resist jumping on the irony that in Love Story, my father's most famous movie, he played the husband of a young woman who was dying of leukemia. His costar, Ali McGraw, even called to cheer him up, saying, "I hope you didn't catch it from me."My father laughed and milked those stories, but they were lost on me.

I found the news horrifying on so many levels. I was still grieving for my mother, who'd come to mean "family"in all those years of estrangement from my father. I already felt rootless, . My father was all I had, whether or not I could cope with his volatility or could even imagine a relationship with him. Without him I felt that I would fly off the planet.Of course, I genuinely loved him—deeply—and I always had, even when I hated him. Blood is the thickest substance on earth; connection to a parent is the fundamental human relationship.

Even beyond that, I still cherished the image of my father as my white knight—the beautiful Irishman, full of warm humor, who rode motorcycles and teased me and raced me infront of the Pierre; who rescued me from squalor and made me his companion; who showed me the world and brought me into show business. He'd been throwing the fact that he "mad eme" in my face for years, which I of course loathed, but I was grateful. I knew I owed him.

My heart went out to him, for all the fear and panic he must be feeling confronting a fatal disease. And I knew how alone he was, because he had driven everyone out of his life through his violence, drug use, and womanizing. He had no friends and had even hurt his career by being, as Norman Mailer, who directed him in Tough Guys Don't Dance, put it,"meaner than cat piss."

Even apart from his treatment of me and Griffin, I'd witnessed my father's brutality to Redmond, who'd wound up in his first rehab at age fourteen. Now, at sixteen, he'd been hospitalized for shooting "glass," a mixture of coke and speed, after my father kicked him out of the house. Farrah had just gone public about a letter my father had written her banishing Redmond from his life.

Still, my father was ill. He was living alone. There was no one who could give me a straight answer about what was going on. So I went.What happened was all too predictable. After I'd told my father I loved him, needed him—that he was the love of my life—that I wanted to take care of him, we almost got into a fistfight.

After I'd told my father I loved him, needed him—that he was the love of my life—that I wanted to take care of him, we almost got into a fistfight.

We were shooting pool at his Malibu beach house, and I was winning, which always made him cranky. The subject came up of his new girlfriend, who was even younger than me. I found that a little weird, and when I said so, in my usual earnest way, my father flipped out and came charging after me.

His illness hadn't softened him at all. It had made him even crazier and more angry, if anything, which was just too incredibly sad.It was like a one-two punch—first the illness and fear of loss and then, after I'd made a normal, human, loving response,the knockdown.

I already had one foot on the slippery slope of relapse, and that rejection was a shove, which sent me tum-bling down into the darkest night of drug use I'd ever had.

By now, I was in my third or fourth year of the urine-testing nightmare. I must have suspected what was coming—that I wasn't going to stay clean. John and I had continued to battle in court over the issue of visitation rights. I'd taken to recording his abusive phone calls for my lawyers, and after my complaints about his blowups with the kids, he'd been mandated to anger-management therapy.

Having long since taken the gloves off, we were now pummeling each other with brassknuckles. I wasn't going to do it anymore. I might win a battle or two,but if I didn't get off the field, I was going to lose my life in the war.So I told John, "You win. I'm defaulting. If you're that determined to get custody of the kids, you can have it."

By then I was convinced that I was a failure as a human being—a bad mother, an incurable addict, worthless, and unlovable. I wanted to take my own life, but believing it would irreparably scar my children, I instead chose the slower death of drugs. I soon hooked up with a drug dealer boyfriend.

I couldn't stop. I drifted from apartment to apartment,from hotel to hotel, scoring coke to hype up, pills to cool down. I was like a ghost of my former self, Even my face had changed, growing so gaunt that no one recognized me. My arms were bumpy and discolored by cellulitis from infected tracks. The veins in my forearms collapsed, and I wound up in the hospital more than once. But as soon as I got stabilized, I was back on the streets, looking to score.

I spent the night at my fathers during that time. He looked at my hands, which by then were scarred and wasted,rattling bones, and said, "Eww, you are so disgusting. You'll never get work with hands like that. You need to eat some-thing!"The next morning he made me breakfast—one sausage and just half of a frozen hash-browns patty.

It was such a clear, begrudging symbol of rejection that Griffin said, "Dad,Tatum needs more food than that!""No, that's plenty. She'll be fine," my father insisted.

At one point, I returned to New York, wanting to see my children. John reiterated what my father had said: "God, you need help. You look worse than I've ever seen you."

He didn't sound any too kindly or concerned—it was more judgmental. Still, he let me see the kids.

"Mom, hurry up and come back to New York," Kevin urged me.It was then that I realized how much my children missed me—that, far from hating me, as I'd feared, they were unhappy that I wasn't around. I knew that John was enraged with me, but his anger hadn't turned them against me. If anything,it had roused their sympathy."I'll come back soon," I promised.

I came close to death.Then my life was saved by my brother Griffin. GRIFFIN WAS FINALLY sober.

By 2002, he'd developed a huge support network in the Los Angeles twelve-step community. I didn't want to stop using, but he grabbed me and started dragging me with him to meetings. So did my great friend Louis, the tour manager for a prominent rock band.

I'd be sitting alone, and he would pull up in his car, saying, "Hey, Tate,it's meeting time,' and haul me out of the house.The twelve-step community took me in, embraced me,and as the AA saying goes, loved me until I could love myself.A lot of those twelve-step slogans are true. Miracles can happen.

I WASNT CURED. That's not really a concept that applies to addiction. Getting clean is more of a constant slog, just keeping your head down and putting one foot in front of the other,one day at a time.

FINALLY, IN THE fall of 2003, I completed the arrangements that would let me move back for good. By then my transformation was so apparent that John didn't even make me undergo drug tests in order to see the kids. I was shocked and,of course, relieved. That's when I really felt that I was putting the nightmare behind me.

My father has bounced back with the help of the antileukemia drug Gleevec, gone on to appear in movies and made a short-lived TV series, Mismatch,with Alicia Silverstone (whom he told the media was the"daughter I should have had").

Over and over again in twelve-step meetings I've been told that injecting myself with needles was just reenacting the beatings I've received at my dad's big hands. Every time I've let down my guard and been lulled into a relationship with him, I've come out the battered victim of his anger and manipulation.

What I've learned is that love definitely doesn't mean "never having to say you're sorry." So I decided that I would just have to let it go.

Hanging on every post, OP.

wow...heartbreaking, seriously.

Jesus, Tatum, just stop going back to your Father, Jesus she will never learn

Ryan O'Neal sounds very similar to Joan Crawford, Both toxic narcissist. Like Tatum, Christina tried desperately to seek her mother love and approval but to no avail.

I'm SURE. Ryan cut Tatum and Griffin out of his will.

For reasons which are well known to them, r212.

It had been reported that Tatum relapsed in 2012 after a huge fight with her sociopath father, and accusing her of being a bad mother. It's very sad that Ryan seems to be the main trigger for Tatum drug addiction. I hope she stays away from him and stays clean and sober from drugs

Everything but the bloodhounds snappin at her rear end.

R213 No Kidding!

I believe Patrick will be the only son included in Ryan's will.

Griffin is the more stable child and not afraid to tell the truth. He tried to help Redmond and Ryan pulled a gun on him for that.

5/11/2009

While his ex is dying of anal cancer, Ryan O'Neal accused of sexually harrassing 20yo

While longtime love Farrah Fawcett is battling cancer, Ryan O'Neal is keeping himself busy by reportedly sexually harassing 20-year-olds!!

Dania Marin, a family friend of O'Neal's, has filed a restraining order with the Los Angeles Superior Court against O'Neal, whom she claims called her on May 6th and asked for a tug job in exchange for a car!!!

Says Marin, "He asked me if I wanted to masturbate with him. Offered me a car back if I would engage him."

She continued, "He freaked me out. I filed the restraining order because I was afraid that he knew where I lived or would come to my house. He's old enough to be my grandfather."

Ya know, we wouldn't put it past O'Neal, who was charged alongside his son for possession of meth earlier in the year!

Griffin was banned by Ryan from attending Farrah's funeral, then he gave an impromptu interview saying that Ryan is a greedy liar who would try to get Farrah's assets. Turned out he was right.

October 6, 2008

Ryan O’Neal does drugs with his son & hires him hookers

"“I’ve known Redmond since seventh grade when we were doing a lot of cocaine and crystal meth…

“About four years ago, Redmond and I were doing crystal, and we took some up to his dad. Ryan scooped some up, crushed it into a line and snorted it…

“Ryan didn’t mind us snorting crystal – with or without him – but he warned us not to smoke it. He thought that was much worse, but we’d break up a sack of crystal and snort it and drink a beer with him, and then go downstairs to Redmond’s room and smoke and get high.”

For a while, O’Neal let his son – who’s been in rehab 12 times since the age of 13 – buy drugs for him from a dealer, explained the friend.

“Then Ryan found out Redmond was ‘shorting’ him – keeping some of the drugs for himself or stealing his money – and he got his own dealer,” confided the friend…

“Once I slept over, and Ryan was driving us to McDonald’s…

“Redmond had been snorting coke all night. He was in the passenger seat and he grabbed Ryan’s gym towel and blew his nose on it. It made a horrible mess.

“Ryan was furious! He punched Redmond in the head so hard that he flew up against the car window and started crying.”

O’Neal also encouraged the two pals to hire prostitutes for sex, claimed the friend.

“When I was over there once, Ryan gave Redmond his credit card and said, ‘Why don’t you guys get yourselves some girls?’” the friend divulged.

“We didn’t take him up on it, but recently Redmond has been using his father’s credit card to pay prostitutes $200 a time to come to the house.”

My cat's name is Redmond.

Orange tabby.

He doesn't snort meth, shoot glass or hire hookers though.

“Redmond had been snorting coke all night. He was in the passenger seat and he grabbed Ryan’s gym towel and blew his nose on it. It made a horrible mess. Ryan was furious! He punched Redmond in the head so hard that he flew up against the car window and started crying.”

SAD

It's amazing that Tatum and Griffin have lived this long. Kudos to them for surviving.

Patrick seems like a stuck-up judgmental brother.

Ryan making Joe Jackson seem like father of the year. I think the O'Neals take the prize for the most dysfunctional Hollywood family ever and it's all Ryan's fault.

RYAN O'NEAL BREAKS SILENCE ON REDMOND'S ATTEMPTED MURDER CHARGE: 'HE'LL GO TO JAIL!'

Ryan O’Neal was confronted with photos of the victim his son Redmond allegedly stabbed in the head last month during his vicious crime spree, and when approached , Ryan said Redmond is not his responsibility and the troubled drifter will “go to jail.” When initially presented with the graphic images, the disheveled father’s first reaction was,

“I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it — what are you after me for?” As readers know, the son of Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett stabbed a man in the head, 3.5 inches into his frontal lobe, in which Ryan told Radar “he’ll go to jail” for.

Redmond’s crazed tirade occurred in the Los Angeles area that began on May 2 and ended with his arrest on May 8.

Ryan Literally ruined all his kids (except Patrick because he didn't live with him).

How can Ryan live with himself?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just found this

R227 Fuck, talk about rewriting history

Wow, OP, great thread. More please!

Ryan sounds like a wonderful man. Patrick clearly adores him. I knew that gorgeous stud in the white boxers in What's Up Doc was always a decent honest individual. I feel sorry for him. Tatum, Griffin and Redmond are spoiled Hollywood brats. Ryan if there was any fault gave them too much and they flung it back in his teeth.

I'm glad Patrick appreciates him and is there for him..

Great satire, R230!! I'm crying I'm laughing so hard at your shade.

Who had the affair with BILLY JOEL? Referenced at r181

If Ryan O'Neal is lurking this thread, He will absolutely believe R230

R227 No one believes you Ryan and Patrick.

Tatum just changed her Twitter profile picture in to this:

Have you ever seen such loving parents? There is no doubt they always wanted the best for her. Sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless daughter.

R236 Lay off the sarcasm, I swear If Ryan or Patrick read this, they will believe it!

I'm guessing he made her cut her hair because he secretly wanted to fuck her when she looked girly.

Question here, Ryan and Tatum were LYING in their flop reality show back in 2011, repeatedly saying that Ryan/ Farrah relationship was the main reason of Tatum and her father's problems and estrangement. Tatum kept saying "Dad you left us and we needed you!!!)

I totally understand why would Ryan spread this myth that Farrah was the reason of Tatum's issues. But why would Tatum spread this BS while she knows very well that her father's abuse started many years before Farrah, Tatum made herself look bad in this show and some people sympathized with Ryan (I'm ashamed to say I was one of them!)

R238 I also believe so, Tatum said Ryan wanted her to look androgynous.

Also, Tatum said on Howard Stern show that when she started to develop breasts, her father didn't know what to do with her and felt awkward.

One of the funniest things I've ever seen was Russell Crowed reaction to Ryan on an Irish talk show. Ryan had been interviewed just before him and had been talking about Tatum in a bizarre, sexual way.

Unfortunately no video of the offending remark but you can read it here.

R241 Ryan's sick comment was : "Farrah was so brave and full of courage and never complained. She never let us feel what she was feeling. I haven't been with anyone since. How do you follow that girl? Well, I could be with Tatum, I guess, but it's a bit late in the game"

R239, the Farrah affair was major - Ryan abandoned Tatum and Griffin for her. Tatum must be as deluded as he is because she lets him off the hook for events that happened after he left her mother, she said she doesn't blame him because "he wasn't there." I heard her say that a talk show. WHY wasn't he looking out for his children when they were living in a haze of drug addicted, alcoholics at her mothers? Tatum has/had a warped sense of how parents are supposed to be responsible. Tatum probably loved all of Ryan's nostalgic horseshit on the Oprah series about her parent's "idyllic marriage" once upon a time because she needed to. In reality, Ryan was fucking around the country side with anything that moved during their marriage.

Funny, R230, you sound exactly like Joan Crawford fans when they excuse her behavior. Christina was a brat and deserved the alleged treatment she got from Joan.

"I haven't been with anyone since"

I'm sure I believe that. Ryan and Farrah didn't get back together after they split in 1997, they were only friends, and he was womanizing as usual. Of course Ryan presented it different because he wants his public image be that of the long suffering widower.

R244 In my opinion, Tatum didn't believe her father's horseshit in the reality show. Also, Ryan leaving his kids for Farrah must have hurt Tatum But It was Not the major issue, Tatum even said in the book that (long before Farrah appeared in their life) she wanted to get away from her father's toxic abusive environment when she got a chance to shoot movies abroad.

Again, I think for the show's sake, Tatum agreed and went along with her father BS and made it like her "jealousy" from Farrah was the reason of Tatum/Ryan's issues.

While promoting the reality show, Tatum appeared on Howard Stern and spoke candidly because she thought her father would not hear the interview, she also said that her father kicked the shit out of her mother and believed that Ryan hurting her mother provoked her mom's instability.

Here's the interview

Cybill Sheperd talked about Ryan's abusive craziness in her book:

Ryan O’Neal :

Peter was planning our next project, entitled Nickelodeon, which would reunite him with Ryan O’Neal. Their friendship was improbable--Ryan was an enthusiastic participant in the recreational drug scene of Hollywood, while Peter rarely considered fogging his brain with even a cocktail.

Ryan often greeted Peter by kissing him on the lips and grabbing him by the balls, and he never considered their camaraderie an impediment to chasing me--on the contrary, he had a reputation for pursuing the girlfriends of all his friends.

He pinned me against a wall at one of Sue Mengers’s parties, ran his fingers through my hair, and whispered, “Let’s fuck.” I giggled and slugged him in the solar plexus.

One day I answered the phone to find Ryan on the other end calling Peter, who wasn’t home. “And how are you?” he inquired, all Irish charm. I’d just come from a dance class and told him that I was getting into shape.... although Peter still liked me nice and round, I wasn’t sure about Martin Scorsese.

“You’ll have to stop eating to lose weight,” said Ryan, his charm suddenly dissipating. “I couldn’t believe Peter putting you in nothing but white for At Long Last Love. You looked like a beached beluga. And everybody’s starting to wonder if he’s lost it. The sound of that flop is still echoing through the Hollywood hills.”

Most other “friends” had been more tactful than to repeat such gossip to my face. I started to cry. “Look,” he said, both guilty and triumphant, “we’re supposed to work together. I’ll come pick you up, we’ll drive to my house at the beach and talk.”

Red lights and warning buzzers should have been going off--STAND AWAY FROM THE DOOR, NOT A THROUGH STREET, TOXIC IF INGESTED--but I didn’t see or hear them.

Since Ryan had just indicated he found me unappealingly fat, and since establishing some bond of friendship seemed a good preamble to working together, I agreed. Ryan barely acknowledged me when I got into his Porsche and almost knocked down the exit gate in his impatience to leave, giving me a filthy look as I buckled my seat belt.

I couldn’t figure out if he was trying to keep me off balance by shifting his mood without warning. There was no possibility of conversation--was singing along to loud acid rock on the radio--he left the motor running with the music blaring when he pulled into a 7-Eleven.

I could see him sharing some laughs with the counterman as he paid for a six-pack of Coors.

Pulling up to his house off the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, he touched a button on the dashboard and the garage door opened, revealing a wooden floor with a rich varnish like a gymnasium. I turned to comment on such unexpected elegance, but he had already vanished inside, leaving the door open behind him.

I’d been in this house for a party once, had already seen the pool table, the stereo equipment, the brass-framed movie mementos (“To Ryan, with deep and sincerest affection, William Holden”), but then I was with Peter, and I’d stayed downstairs.

“Ever seen my bedroom?” he asked. “C’mon upstairs. The view is fabulous.” WRONG WAY: NO OUTLET, DANGEROUS CURVES--I still didn’t see the signs.

Climbing the stairs, we entered a bachelor pad, decorated in earth tones with a fur spread on the bed—the real thing, I think. Suddenly there was a clatter of bottles coming from the bathroom. Ryan ran in and emerged a moment later, with a pretty girl in tow.

She was wearing a cheap cotton shift and rubber gloves. “This is Sarah,” he said familiarly. “She’s doing a little tidying up, but she’s going to come back later. Now beat it, honey,” he said, giving her behind a playful slap.

As soon as she left, he turned to me and said, “I don’t know why I let her in here--she has no idea what she’s doing.” I didn’t know what she was doing either, but I had clearly interrupted something.

Gesturing toward a couch, he said, “Have a seat,” but he stood near the window with its spectacular view of the surf, pointing out the various celebrity homes up and down the beach. “I can see everything that _____does,” he said, naming a well-known actor, “and believe me, he’s weird.”

Then he came to the sofa, standing over me. “You know, you could be really good if you had the right parts,” he said. “Something has happened to Peter. He has to get back on track, and you’ve got more to do with it than anyone.”

As he tallied, he periodically used both hands to cup his balls, which were right at my eye level, a gesture that, at the time, I didn’t know as checking his package.

The whole scene was starting to give me the creeps. I stood up, saying that it was getting late and I needed to get back. He stopped me by putting his arms around my shoulder, drawing me close to his chest, and making little moans of satisfaction as we swayed back and forth,

one of his hands on my neck and the other at the small of my back. I started to pull away and felt his muscles resist, stop me for an instant and then relax.

I excused myself to use the bathroom, and when I came out, he was looking at his watch--another mood shift.

“I’d better be going too,” he said irritably. “I’m supposed to pick my son up by six.”

On the way home, he put a Vivaldi cassette in the car’s tape deck. “If you like this,” I said in a friendly tone, “I can turn you on to some music that makes this sound like shit.”

He snapped his head around. “How can you say this is shit?” he snarled.

“I didn’t mean that,” I said hastily, seeing that I had insulted his tastes and not wanting to provoke him. “I just meant that there’s some beautiful Beethoven I’d like to play for you....”

“I know about Beethoven,” he said, then popped out the Vivaldi and turned on the radio full blast, although it could barely be heard through the whoosh from the open sunroof.

The Vivaldi turned out to be part of the soundtrack for Ryan’s next film, Barry Lyndon, and after I’d seen it, I sent him a copy of the Beethoven Piano Concerto no. 4 with the inscription, “This is a fitting tribute to your superb performance.” He never responded- ..

...........During the hiatus I made a film called Chances .The producer was a pal of Ryan O’Neal and lobbied for him to play the family friend who’s really been in love with my character all along. Considering our history, Ryan was the last person I wanted to work with. “Casting him is a great way to ruin this movie,” I warned. But everybody else kept turning down the role, so we got him by default(Turned out I was wrong. He was terrific.)

Tatum is a liar and no matter what he does, he's still Ryan O'Neal

Tatum would be great in something like The View.

I dunno R252. Tatum's ghostwriter is marvelously articulate and the books are very well written. Tatum herself, I doubt she graduated high school, is far less so. (I'm being nice).

I am sure that everything Tatum has written is true. But she lost me about 200 posts in. No one can be that much of a victim. A lot of us here had abusive and dysfunctional families, but we got away from them. Also - I personally would never throw my own family under the bus like that, in public.

Nice to hear from you again, Patrick!

When you have little education yet come a wealthy and, sadly, prominent family, there's really not much you can do. What are the options?

Tatum needs to remake the Betty Broderick movies. All she has to think about is that Ryan and Farrah are the shithead and the cunt. She'll get Emmys and healing.

Tatum didn't throw her family under the bus. She lived her life under public scrutiny and her fuck-ups made news, then having to deal with Ryan out there saying she's an embarrassment and making himself out to be a great father. She writes her memoir and was honest about her life, what was she supposed to do, lie and whitewash her childhood and her abusive father? I'm surprised she's so balanced psychologically, yes even with history of substance abuse, because she endured not only abusive Ryan but crazy environment and people in Hollywood that shaped her.

R253 Have you listened to Tatum's podcast? She comes off as smart and contemplative.

Is she clean in 2019?

Tatum did change her Twitter profile to that photo of Ryan, her mom, and herself as a baby. At this point, I think she is a glutton for punishment. She does have a right to tell her story, though. Seeing her chase after Ryan's approval is a wakeup call, you just have to abandon some things.

Look how defensive Ryan was regarding Redmond's attempted murder charge. People must be blaming Ryan for Redmond's troubles.

R253 Have you heard Tatum on her podcast? She came across as relatable and smart.

She comes off fine, R259/R262, but she didn't write her books like most people don't. And as far as Tatum getting a job on The View, I see no evidence that she is capable of talking about anything outside of herself. That's not criticism, that's an evaluation on whether she's qualified to be a host on a TV talks show.

R251 Kick Rocks, Ryan

R254 You don't know about abused people will likely continue in a cycle of abuse. It's very difficult to break this vicious cycle.

R253 Actually, Tatum is very articulate and smart in interviews, this has nothing to do with the education level.

R251 Go back to sleep, Ryan and STFU

R254 Have you lived Tatum's life?!!!!!!!!

Ryan lied through his teeth in his memoir in 2012

Tatum & Redmond O'Neal Slam Dad Ryan's New Memoir

R266, read R263.

I like Tatum. I believe her. However, I agree with those who say she's not telling the full story. I respect her for admitting her own faults that she's not a perfect mother, etc. But I do think she may be hotheaded and temperamental like Ryan. I have a feeling they may be similar temperament-wise.

However, I do not think Tatum is in any way abusive or cruel like Ryan is. Or she may be like Christina Crawford in the film version of Mommie Dearest, the cool, somewhat icy child who doesn't fawn over her famous parent, which irks famous parent to no end.

"But I do think she may be hotheaded and temperamental like Ryan."

If she were - she would have disowned Ryan long ago. That Tatum is such a needy doormat seeking Ryan's approval has made her what she it.

Can't anyone on Farrah's Texas side of the family step in to help Redmond? Redmond has no education and chronic drug addition, and he endured those two idiots for parents. That kid has no chance.

From Vanity fair 2009:

O'Neal fumes when asked about Tatum's autobiography, saying "She wrote a book--bitch! How dare she throw our laundry in the street for money!... She didn't call after Farrah's show. She'll have to explain that."

Farrah and Ryan deserved each other, She was crazy liar.

Form the Vanity Fair article above:

"Fawcett’s relationships with other lovers could be equally tempestuous. After her breakup with O’Neal, Fawcett began a disastrous relationship with film producer and director James Orr, during which one of his former girlfriends accused Fawcett of stealing $72,000 in clothing from Orr’s house and destroying nude pictures of her worth $2,400.

Then Fawcett discovered an envelope containing a woman’s return address in Orr’s outdoor garbage container. “She flew into a rage and started breaking my windows,” says Orr, who declined to press charges. The following night Fawcett returned and vandalized his house with a baseball bat, according to Orr. When the police arrived, Fawcett told them they should arrest Orr for assault instead of arresting her for vandalism. In August 1998, Orr was convicted on one count of misdemeanor battery.

Contrary to many press accounts blaming Orr, however, “the offense had nothing to do with Ms. Fawcett turning down any proposal of marriage but rather with Ms. Fawcett being extremely jealous and angry over a suspected relationship between Mr. Orr and another woman … which, based on the letters I have received, was nonexistent,” said Superior Court judge Robert T. Altman at Orr’s sentencing hearing in Santa Monica in October 1998. “My own conclusion … is that Ms. Fawcett … precipitated the violence.… She repeatedly kicked Mr. Orr’s seat and grabbed him by the face when he was driving home from dinner; that she brought a baseball bat to Mr. Orr’s house and during the course of the evening, wielded the bat, a fireplace poker, and a heavy drum … stand.…When he didn’t come out, Ms. Fawcett … trashed both his house and his car to the tune of over $22,000 in damages.”

The judge gave Orr the minimum sentence allowed by law, including three years of probation, anger-management classes, and 100 hours of community service—but the story wasn’t over yet. Fawcett had hired private detective Anthony Pellicano, who attended the trial and made public statements on her behalf. In 2006, when Pellicano was indicted by federal prosecutors on wiretapping charges, Orr discovered that he was one of Pellicano’s victims. According to count No. 72 of the indictment, “In or around January 1998, defendant Pellicano used the ‘Telesleuth’ program to intercept telephone communications of James Orr.”

“Needless to say, I was shocked,” says Orr. “Now I realized why Farrah had hired Pellicano. On her behalf, he had been illegally wiretapping and recording conversations on my home phone, including privileged conversations with my attorney.”

When Ryan’s children were still young, the family dynamic was further complicated by Tatum’s unexpected stardom. At the age of 10, she earned an Oscar for her performance opposite Ryan in the movie Paper Moon, becoming the youngest actor ever to win a competitive Academy Award. Her father blames this achievement for causing jealousy and resentment within the family.

“Everybody hated everybody because of that Academy Award,” he says.

So Ryan confessed he hated his daughter after winning the Oscar.

[quote] Can't anyone on Farrah's Texas side of the family step in to help Redmond? Redmond has no education and chronic drug addition, and he endured those two idiots for parents. That kid has no chance.

At this point, he is an adult with probably more money than his mother's side of the family. No matter how much you might love/care about somebody, they are ultimately in charge of themselves.

Form the book:

Stanley Kubrick

"But there was more going on between us than childish fussing. Vivian's charms weren't lost on my father, who had started to set us at odds. "Vivian's so talented," he'd say. "Tatum can hardly read and write." Or "Vivian, you're so beautiful, so graceful, so funny, so smart. Tatum, you're just a silly little girl."

My father mesmerized full-grown women, so it was no wonder that twelve-year-old Vivian fell for him. He was so handsome, funny, and seductive that she developed a deep and desperate crush on him. I began to worry that she tolerated me only as a conduit to my father. Worse yet, her crush didn't seem entirely unrequited.

While I'm sure they never had any sexual contact—my father never had a thing for young girls—he evidently relished her affection enough to keep pouring on the charm.

When Vivian told Stanley about my father's flirtation, he was outraged. I never heard what he said to my father about it,but they had some kind of falling out. Stanley later dropped my father as the narrator of Barry Lyndon.

The Oscar:

I WAS IN ENGLAND when we got the call. Paper Moon had garnered four Oscar nominations: Best Sound, Best Screenplay Adapted from Another Medium, and two shots at Best Supporting Actress, for me and for Madeline Kahn. Worst of all, for the Best Actor nomination, my father didn't make the cut.

You'd think an Oscar nomination would be an indelible moment, a victory to cherish and savor for a lifetime. But for me it must have been a trauma instead of a triumph. I can't remember it at all. Where I was, who told me, whether anyone gave me a hug, shook my hand, showered me with praise, or glossed it over, I couldn't say. The memory is totally lost to me.

It was Vivian who first revealed how my father reacted to the news. He socked me. For a child already obsessed with losing her father, who was living in terror, believing that his love was ebbing away, that would have been way too painful to process. If I've blocked it out, it's no wonder.I do know that my dad let his bitterness leak to the British press, saying,

"She's lazy by nature . . . but she took over the picture. To start with it was known as Ryan's Daughter and then after a while it was called Tatum's Dad. . . . No, she's not going to make another picture. I'm not going to work with her again, nor is Peter."I guess his jealousy was out of control.

Returning to the States for the ceremony—alone, shaky,and sad—I felt like Little Orphan Annie. My father stayed behind in England, because he was too busy with Barry Lyndon, and there was no word from my mother or Griffin. I was still too cut off from them. It was as if I had committed some unmentionable, possibly unpardonable sin by winning the nomination.

Wonderful thread. Many thanx OP!

Barry Lyndon:

In April 1976. One hot summer day my father and I were speeding down the Pacific Coast Highway in his beige Rolls-Royce..... The conversation turned to our soon-to be-released movies, and he brought up the hit comedy he'd made with Barbra Streisand in the early 1970s.

"Do you think The Bad News Bears will be as big as What's Up, Doc?" he asked.

"Definitely," I told him.

"Well, then, which picture is going to do better—The Bad News Bears or Barry Lyndon?

"The Bad News Bears is going to make a ton of money," I insisted.

"I'll bet you a lot of money that Barry Lyndon beats it."

I took the bet. Barry Lyndon was released that December. Its three-hour running time and low-key emotion discouraged a lot of movie-goers and even some major critics . When The Bad News Bears came out in the spring, it struck such a chord with young male baby boomers that it far outstripped Barry Lyndon at the box office. So I won hands down.

This time I didn't need Vivian to remind me of my father's reaction. He punched me. It didn't look like our relationship,which began to erode so badly in England, was due to get better anytime soon.

To welcome me and Carrie, my dad had a room all decorated with posters of Rod Stewart and Marc Bolan. However,it soon became clear that something had changed my father. He was always cranky and preoccupied,and he seemed determined to pit me against Carrie.

He'd stage footraces between the two of us and then cheer her on.

"Wow, look at those legs. Carrie, you're so fast! You're such a good runner—so much better than Tatum!"

Jealous and confused because she'd somehow gained my father's favor, I took out my frustrations on Carrie. "My dad paid for you to come here," I'd tell her. "And I'm bigger than you, so I'm the boss."

As usual, an entourage surrounded my father,including my uncle Kevin, his artist friend Greg, and a glamorous Belgian blonde named Caroline. Caroline had originally dated Greg but, like Tuesday Weld, wound up with my father instead, after considerable drama.

In what would become a lifelong pattern, my father maneuvered Caroline and me into an even more lopsided and painful triangle than the one he'd set up with Carrie.

It was lopsided because in this case I was seriously over matched. Caroline was an icy beauty, always perfect turned out In gleaming silk blouses and gabardine slacks and I was a gawky, self-conscious preadolescent. She had something powerful to offer my father that I didn't even understand yet: sex.

As if to drive that point home, my father locked me out of his bedroom, once actually shutting the door in my face and shouting, "You don't get to come in here. Only Caroline can.'

I cried outside his door for what seemed like hours.

Cher:

Around the time I was making The Bad News Bears, I was invited to appear on a new comedy show hosted by Cher. I fell totally in love with Cher—not in a sexual way, of course, but with a desperate hunger for her attention,as in "Please take over my life. Let me be like you."

As soon I finished with The Bad News Bears, I embarked on an intense campaign to win her over. I called all the time and literally camped on the doorstep of her mansion right off Carrollwood Drive, next door to Jayne Mansfield's former home. I implied that I had nowhere else to go, which wasn't quite true. My father had bought a house in Beverly Hills,where I was staying with a babysitter. Once I even conspired with my half-brother Patrick to pretend that I'd fainted and there was no one he could call but Cher.

Cher took it all with remarkable good humor. She even let me live at her house for a few weeks. It was heaven! Her daughter, Chastity Bono, was around sometimes, but she was so much younger that I never really played with her. All I wanted to do was to hang out with Cher.

Cher got her nails done every other day. We went shopping at Theodore on Rodeo Drive, where she bought one of everything. All her clothes were brand-new, with the tags still on them. She had the same shirt in every color. I was blown away.

My room was way down the hall from the master suite, where Cher slept in a huge grand bed. Hating as usual to be shut out, I once knocked on her door, insisting that I had to see her. She came out stark naked.

"What are you doing here?"she said, angrily enough that I never did it again.

Cher was close to Raquel Welch, who was appearing on the show. I told Cher that I'd overheard Raquel complaining that she hated her segment and that Cher was terrible in it.That caused a big rift between them for a while. Raquel wound up hating me, and so did David Geffen, who at the time was Cher's lover.

I was with Cher the night that she met Gregg Allman. I have a picture of us at the Troubadour, the club where he was playing. I'm wearing a little satin jacket.

When I realized she was falling in love with him, I took the drastic step of confiding that I'd seen him shooting heroin—having no idea what that was—in her house."Oh, he's a big drug addict,' I told Cher. He wasn't, but Cher believed me for a while

They wound up getting married, and needless to say, Gregg joined the long list of people in Cher's life who disliked me for years.But Cher forgave my trouble making. After dislodging me from her house, she would still take me on outings, picking me up in her fabulous light blue Ferrari. I started to obsess about cars after that.

After The Bad News Bears, my dad hired a babysitter to look after me, Sabrina Guinness, She was in her early twenties, and I liked her because she wasn't big on rules. She once crashed my fathers Rolls-Royce with me in it. I was okay.

Sabrina's favorite thing to do was take me to rock stars'houses, where she liked to hang out. I'd get tired of sitting around and do crazy things. One day, when we were over at Rod Stewart's house, I recorded, This really weird thing happened. A fire started. It was really strange because it wasn't from electricity. . . .In fact, I knew exactly how the fire had started. I had set it,out of boredom. Since my father read my diary—despite my note on the opening page, demanding that he stop.

Another time, Britt Ekland was with Rod when we were visiting, and when she wanted to go home, I stole her shoe so she couldn't leave. I guess I needed attention. It was a weird period and I was feeling very lost.

THOSE YEARS WERE a blur of crazy Hollywood parties. My agent Sue Mengers's were legendary, and all the top actors would come: Clint Eastwood, Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson,and Robert De Niro. I remember sitting on the floor one night and noticing that Robert De Niro's wife wasn't wearing any underwear.

At one dinner, I was seated next to Woody Allen, and he scolded me. "You have to stop doing th.is'"

"Doing what?""You're scratching it. You're making this noise. You're scratching the fork!"All I could say was, "Oops—sorry!" I was so embarrassed.

.I was always watching the adults around me and judging them, wondering how I was going to be, what I would turn into. My diary is filled with critical observations: A lot of the people were drunk—it wasn't the greatest party. . . . My dad and I went to Goldie Hawn's—it was so boring I could not believe it. . . . This party we went to last night—about 3 million stars were there: John Denver sang. Frank Sinatra sang. Diana Ross sang about fourteen songs, but after the third one she put me to sleep. Barbra and Jon were there. Barbra has got this new haircut. It looks awful. She is with such a putz it's unbelievable but if he makes her happy, I guess that's all that counts . . ."

It was at a party for the American Film Institute tribute to John Ford that I met Dustin Hoffman for the first time. I fell madly in love with him.

He had a ballet-dancer wife and a child,but I felt sure that someday we were destined to be together. I even wrote him a song, which Griffin makes fun of to this day:

Dusty, where's your heart?Do you know that mine's right with you?Can't you see how I'm mesmerized by your smile?I look through eyes, which think you're mighty wise. Doesn't that mean anything to you?Oh, why do I dig you? . . .

My partygoing drew a lot of attention from the press, which began to characterize me as a wild child who was growing up too fast.

Around the time of Nickelodeon, I got a cover story in Newsweek, headlined "Tatum! The Hollywood Kid." By then I knew what publicity could cost me, and I wrote in my diary : "It's a great article. I'm just a little worried. The whole thing is about me,and I think my dad might be a little jealous. I feel sad about that . . . my dad is in a bad mood tonight."

My WHOLE WORLD REVOLVED around my father's volatile moods. He was doing a lot of drugs and was arrested for possession of marijuana after a police raid on the Barrymore house. He would sleep away half the day while I tiptoed around, scared to wake him and rouse his temper.

When we were making Nickelodeon, he stayed holed up in the hotel or his trailer. It was a very difficult shoot.

Diane Lewis was my guardian on the set. She wore hard contact lenses, which made me curious. I tried them on and got one stuck in the back of my eye. So, for one night, my father was forced out of his seclusion in the hotel while I was rushed to the hospital to have it taken out. I had scratched my cornea.

The only other time I remember seeing him was when we were working. Then he was always angry and belittling, and I was really defenseless. I wrote in my diary:

"My dad makes fun of me the whole day. Then every time my dad yells at me, Peter puts in his two cents. That adds up to be about twelve dollars. They don't think I have any feelings."

I visited my mother occasionally on Bolas Street in West L.A.—not a very good neighborhood—and observed what she'd do and wear and even eat, weird country combinations like apples with salt and cheese or salted grapefruit and watermelon.

She and Gary, her husband, who was a roofing contractor, were members of an evangelistic religious sect. Griffin had to go to Bible study classes at Pat Boone's house.

Once, around the time of Paper Moon, I got a serious blast of her religion when she started speaking in tongues and beating the hell out of me.So my mother was nothing like the fashionable, worldly,and independent women I found so inspiring. Today I respect and deeply love her, though I'm saddened by what she made of her life. I was also a little afraid of her.

I heard about her mainly when there was some new crisis involving her or Griffin—and there were plenty. One day Griffin fell off his bike on Gary's job site, landing in the hospital because a stake went straight up his rectum. That was terrible. However, the main problem was my mother s alcoholism. She was constantly drunk—Gary left her because of it—and poor Griffin was losing his mind.

Are we sure it was an accident ?

John McEnroe could be an asshole, but he had many decent attributes. What was Ryan's redeeming quality? Good-looking? I wish McEnroe had beat the shit out of Ryan.

Thanks for posting this, OP. This is quite riveting.

Tatum's first public boyfriend was pop star Michael Jackson, whom she dated in the late 1970s. Jackson described O'Neal as his first love, and in a 2002 interview with Martin Bashir said that O'Neal tried to seduce him.

O'Neal's relationship with tennis player John McEnroe began in 1984 when she moved into his Central Park West condominium in New York City, O'Neal's drug problems reemerged and she developed an addiction to heroin. As a result, McEnroe obtained custody of the children in 1998.

On June 1, 2008, she was arrested for buying crack cocaine near her Manhattan apartment building.

Tatum's mother Joanna Moore was on her third husband (O'Neal) before she was 30. Even Andy Griffin couldn't stand her and had her written out after four episodes of playing Peg, his love interest. The woman was a cluster fuck and you are assigning all the blame to Ryan?

That bit about Cher was really interesting.

There's enough blame to spread around, R291.

It's easy to forget now because it's been so long, but Tatum was a huge star in her own right. In 1976, she made the top ten list of Quigley's Biggest Box Office Stars, quite an impressive feat for a 12 year old. Between that (due in large part to the success of Bad News Bears) and her Oscar, Tatum's level of fame was huge and would be a challenge even for someone being raised in a stable environment, let alone the madhouse that she was.

So did Ryan make out with 12 years old Vivian Kubrick?!!!

"The woman was a cluster fuck and you are assigning all the blame to Ryan?"

Well, he was the one repeatedly punching his daughter in the face, and continuously humiliating and putting her down, and later virtually abandoning her when he hooked up with Farrah.

John McEnroe making fun of the O'Neals

[quote]I heard about her mainly when there was some new crisis involving her or Griffin—and there were plenty. One day Griffin fell off his bike on Gary's job site, landing in the hospital because a stake went straight up his rectum.

I would bet anything that the poor kid didn't just accidentally sit on a metal stake.

Lana Wood Talks About Ryan O'Neal in her book:

"Hair also figured into my affair with Ryan. He was, when he wished to be, an enormously appealing man. Natalie once asked me what kind of lover he was, and I couldn't answer. Even though I had been married twice, I was not experienced enough to know a really good lover when I had one. Ryan, I told her, was like having a glass of champagne without knowing too much about the various brands of champagne. Special, that is, but not a whole lot more. Nor was he wont to keep his complaints to himself.

One morning he rolled over, looked at me, and propped himself up on his elbow. "What do you do to stop that?" he asked, pointing to my hair. It was very long and very curly.

"Stop what?

"The curling. God, it's awful." Curly hair was not then in fashion, and whatever else he was, Ryan was fashion-conscious. He wasn't one to hesitate when it came to criticizing others, either.

"I straighten it. It takes a while, but it comes out straight."

"Well, you better get up and get going. If you don't straighten it, I'm not taking you to the ballgame with me."

I was hurt and should have followed my instinct to skip the ballgame. I was no great baseball fan, but I had a wish for Ryan to like me, and so I went.

We sat with Ryan's chum Lee Majors, who was then single too. When Ryan left his seat to go for a beer and Lee invited me out on a date the next night, I was certain I should have skipped the game. I told Lee I was busy, and told him several more times in the next few weeks before he got the message.

Ryan and I didn't last much longer. Natalie, who was aware of our relationship, wondered how it was with Ryan and how, as I recall she put it, he was "fitting into my life."

"Outstanding," I replied.

"Outstanding?" "Out standing in the hall." Natalie thought that was very funny.

If I have a habit of making the wrong choice of men, I also have a facility for maintaining a friendship after a love affair has ended. Ryan and I continued to be friends until, after I left the series, we went our separate ways. I watched the progress of his affair with Farrah Fawcett, she of the long, lush, curly mane, with interest. I was not at all surprised one day when she appeared, Ryan on her arm, her hair cut short. I should have warned her

OUTSTANDING

Estranged son of Ryan O'Neal charges that not only did the star cheat on his great love Farrah Fawcett but broke her arm in a violent rage!

Griffin also claims his "violent" dad, who once knocked out his son's two front teeth in a fight, also shattered Fawcett's arm in a vicious 1983 row.

"My dad went into a rant," Griffin added.

"Farrah came flying at him to defend herself, he blocked her and, in the process, broke her arm.

"They spun the truth to protect Ryan (but) I was there, I saw it happen," Griffin said.

SON:VIOLENT RYAN BROKE FARRAH'S ARM - Celebrity News | Gossip - National Enquirer

Thank you OP for a great thread.

From r274, As for Ryan’s other son, Patrick, “he does fine—he has his own show on Fox Sports—but I don’t like him either. He’s not likable,” Ryan says.

So much for the little suck up son.

I feel sad that Tatum still seems to crave her father's love. Another thing hit me reading it was her crush on Tom Cruise, glad she swerved that one .

Redmund is so damaged he clearly has deep emotional and mental issues. He is beyond help. During her pregnancy Farah could have been having drug and alcohol issues which could have caused a certain amount of brain damage.

Farrah was trash. To bring an innocent child into this crazy drugged household.

Online comment about Ryan O'Neal:

"Stories around L.A. are just so utterly disgusting. the man is a revolting pig the way he treats normal people like valets and just anybody you come across in your day to day activities. just little things I've heard, like him verbally attacking anyone and everyone he can get away with like people in lets say "lesser" positions in life than himself for instance valets. he's notoriously cruel to them verbally even to the point of threatening them and for what?! they just park your car you know! he's just a son of a Bitch to put it simply."

I wonder who will show up when Ryan dies? Patrick for the dosh and Tatum for closure maybe. I can't see him having crowds of fans or Hollywood people.

Online comment about Ryan lying about Farrah using drugs:

"btw he and Farrah both did hardcore drugs so he's full of shit right there; she did smoke - its called heroin and she smoked it"

He had fans when he was good-looking, and that was 40 years ago.

R306 I also think so, Patrick and Tatum will attend the funeral and maybe Alana Stewart and Ali MacGraw.

Another online comment on Farrah's drug use:

"well I sadly know for a fact that she smoked heroin , I can't say how I know it, but I do. and this was in the last few years too - a woman in her 50s doing drugs like that?! I mean, it can't be good for you either way. I just know someone who witnessed her doing that and its well-known in that circle too, she did do drugs like that, besides the usual prescription pill abuse everyone in Hollywood does"

Tuesday, July 4, 2006 TATUM O'NEAL: MY FATHER HATES ME

Tatum O'Neal claims her father hated her for winning an Oscar.

The actress won the prestigious accolade aged just ten when she supported her dad, actor Ryan O'Neal, in 1973's "Paper Moon."

But rather than praise her for her achievement, Tatum insists her father took out his own career frustrations on her.

Tatum, 42, confessed to Britain's Stella magazine: "Things with my dad were pretty good until I won an Academy Award. He was really loving to me until I got more attention than he did. Then he hated me - literally hated me. Forever!"

Tatum later married US tennis star John McEnroe, who she had three children with, in 1986 and battled heroin addiction in the wake of their eventual split in 1992.

The actress blames her father's rejection for her problems in adulthood. She said: "I'm not going to get into the psychology of it, but I feel as women it is our responsibility to get away from men like that. I didn't choose my father, but I chose to leave home."

This shit here: These two go from hope, love, and light and then to disgust, betrayal, and hate all within the course of two to three minutes! Where can I see the entire series?

When he abandoned the juvenile Tatum and her brother to go and live with Farrah, he says "Yeah, I left her. I left her on the curb, but I told her to stay on the curb! I'd be back!" Damn - this guy just doesn't get it.

Tatum Hopes that her text book narcissist father will admit to his abuse and faults and apologize so that she can move on, but It will NEVER happen.

I think Tatum would look so much better had she not had a nose job.

"I wish McEnroe had beat the shit out of Ryan."

No, he wouldn't be able to. Ryan is a muscular guy with a nothing to lose attitude. McEnroe is a skinny guy with delicate tennis hands.

The Lana Wood affair was during Ryan's marriage to Joanna Moore.

To answer a prior question, why haven't any of the Fawcetts of Houston stepped forward to help Redmond? They're all dead.

From the book:

Tatum's mother:

When I was born, my father was twenty-two, and my mother was nearly seven years older. He and his parents men-tioned the age gap so often—as if it were huge—that I grew up believing they were at least a decade apart.

My father's romantic life was also spilling off the TV screen.The tabloids had a field day linking him to a parade of starlets.He would describe his marriage in this period as "desolate."Very likely my mother's drinking and drug use—probably in secret—played a role.

As their fighting escalated, my father grew physically violent. But for my mom the last straw came one day in the super-market. Griffin was in the shopping cart and I was toddling alongside it. At the checkout she saw a Photoplay magazine with a cover story on my father's seduction of Barbara Parkins,his costar on Peyton Place. It was cruelly detailed, and it all rang true. My mother was devastated.

In 1966 she and my father separated, and a year later they were divorced. That same year my dad married Leigh Taylor-Young, Mia Farrows replacement on the show, who was three months pregnant with my half-brother Patrick. Leigh claims that during her pregnancy my father made her work out everyday and even timed her jogging speed. She was playing tennis on the day she went into labor. She calls this enforced regimen a 'favor" from my father, and maybe it did her good. But to me it sounds like the same aggressive bullying that my father would inflict on us in years to come.

AFTER MY DAD LEFT, my mothers mania darkened, and she fell into a deeper instability and confusion. As her life grew unmanageable, ours did too. She had adopted two huge German shepherds, Sarge and Tiara, which were ferocious former LAPD dogs. One of them bit me in the face. My mother would shut us up in our rooms for hours,leaving us no choice hut to defecate on the floor.

Jon Peters recalls a weekend when my mother went out, forgetting that she'd locked me and Griffin in a bathroom. When she remembered, she called Jon, who rushed over to rescue us.

Still, my mom wanted custody and imagined, in her paranoia, that my dad was scheming to take us away. She once dragged Griffin out by the pool to show him what looked like a little plastic bag, poking out from under the tile roof. 'You see that?" she said. "That's where your father has been planting marijuana, so the cops will find it and arrest me."

We seemed to see so little of her that I have only one vivid memory of my mom during this time. Griffin and I woke up one morning, unsupervised as usual, and started poking around in the garage, then found that we were locked in. We cried and hammered on the door, but my mother slept on,oblivious, for the next four or five hours.

When we got hungry,there was nothing to eat but dog food, and when we got bored,there was nothing to do but raise hell. We'd discovered a cache of lightbulbs and were gleefully smashing them to bits when suddenly the door flew open.

There was my mother, in a white-hot fury. "Why, why, you little . . . ," she stammered. Slapping and grabbing at Griffin and me, she flung us into the house. There, luckily, she found an inanimate object to vent her rage on—my brother's bunk bed, which she tore apart like a woman possessed.Frightening as my mother's temper could be—and she was freewheeling with her fists, coming from a generation that was big on beatings—beneath it, even then, we could sense her impotence. We continued to act out, unmoved by her anger.

Ironically he learned nothing from his role in Irreconcilable differences

Helen Crump look like a reasonable person by comparison.

We became neighborhood terrors by stealing whatever we could get our hands on. Griffin managed to swipe an electric garage opener and would hide in the ivy, raising and lowering the door, to torment the man who lived next to us. When Griffin discovered sharp objects, his mischief making turned serious. He slashed one of our nannies with a knife, almost severing her hand.

My mother made little effort to stop us that I recall. She seemed powerless—barely accepting responsibility for her own life, never mind for her children. She would take us with her to bars—shades of Addie's mother in Payer Moon—start drinking, and disappear.

We'd be left clutching a slip of paper with my grandparents' phone number. The bartender would call and have them come and pick us up.

"There were such emergencies for so many years," my grandmother would say." The experience would have destroyed some children."But it was my mother who seemed destroyed, like a passive victim waiting for rescue.

It's not a choice of perspective that I respect, though I understand it now. As an adult I can see how much she really had been victimized—by her past, by Hollywood, and by men, including my father.She wasn't always in a fog. There were times when she could pull herself together, and I remember loving her then, so much. She used to tell me a bedtime story, I would fall asleep to the sound of her soft southern voice,

THOSE MOMENTS OF ENGAGEMENT were rare.

Do you think Ryan got to sample Farrah's chili hole?

My dad's visits were infrequent, but he somehow seemed more present and involved than the parent we lived with. My happiest times were the weekends when he took me to the pony rides at LaCienega Park.

Once when we were there, he promised me a dollar if I would stop sucking my thumb. So, by sheer force of will, I did stop. In the daytime I kept my thumb clutched tightly in my fist, and at night I imprisoned it under my pillow, rubbing it on the satin trim of my blanket to fight the overpowering urge to stick it in my mouth.

I didn't do it for the dollar, though.I did it because even at three or four years old I knew my mother was too ill to care for me and because I was miserable and frightened and lonely and longing for the comfort of a parent.

I did it because I loved my big, handsome daddy and thought if I stopped sucking my thumb, that would prove it.Then, like the angel horse, he would carry me away, taking me home to live with him.It would be another year or two before that happened.

WHEN I WAS FIVE my mother decided that we should change our lives by leaving the L.A. suburbs for "the country."She found a small, four-acre ranch in Reseda, then one of the poorer sections of the northern San Fernando Valley, which reminded her of her own rustic beginnings.The ranch lay at the end of a rough dirt road and was screened by a thicket of untamed brush. My grandmother, fittingly, called the place Tobacco Road.

How my mother planned to make the ranch livable, I can't imagine. She couldn't afford to fix it up. Her career was foundering, thanks to her addictions, and my father had been vindictively stingy in the divorce.

Still, for my mother the ranch seemed to hold some promise of redemption, which she never explained. Maybe she just needed to leave L.A., to get a fresh start. Maybe she wanted a clean break.

"I thought the ranch would be a beautiful existence," my mother later said. "But it turned into a nightmare."

My MOM HAD a fifteen-year-old boyfriend—I'll call him"Seth"—with long, stringy hair and tattoos on the biceps bulging out of his T-shirts. Early on, Griffin and I discovered his cruel streak. We'd adopted a family of rats we'd seen running around the ranch as our pets—setting out little dishes of food and water and giving them names.

But Seth insisted that they had rabies. Rather than get rid of them quietly, with poison or traps, he threw them in pond and made us watch them drown. Since they can't swim, it took a very long time, and it completely freaked US out.

Most of the time, my mother was either closed up in her room—sitting up for days, writing to Jesus—or else drinking and partying with Seth and his relatives or an older couple (I'll call them the "Jonnsons') sort of adopted my mom.

My mother wasn't just boozing, however. Griffin recalls finding white-flecked syringes around the house, evidence that her addiction was escalating.So were her bouts of paranoia.

Our meals were erratic, basically consisting of fast food, along with whatever we could scrounge. I was so hungry that I ate raw bacon and, once, a whole tub of Cool Whip, which made me sick. Worst of all was the can of olives I started in on before I realized it was crawling with maggots. I didn't even know what they were. Griffin and I grew scrawny, and my teeth ached with cavities and from an abscess that I tried to ease by jabbing it with a fork. But my first dental appointment was still a few years off.

BY PHILIP LARKIN They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.

Farrah and Ryan deserved each other. My first trip to England (as an adult), and they were both on the flight with their kid returning to LAX. To start with, she was wearing her costume and wig from Poor Little Rich Girl. No time to change before the flight, or attention whore?

We're at customs, and Farrah and Ryan completely ignore Redmond (there's no nanny) while he knocks over all the pole dividers and causes mayhem. Finally, security brings the brat to them. Both shockingly oblivious to anyone but themselves.

And of course, Farrah shoplifting and the salesperson telling me that they just send the bill to her accountant. My only 2 Farrah stories.

The legacy of cruelty, R324, lives for generations. I have no doubt that Ryan was raised by abusive assholes himself. Irish Americans with ancestors who came during the forced famine years passed on that trauma to future generations.

You can stop it when you're aware. But you have to have a shred of decency for that to happen. Ryan O'Neal is scum.

One night my mother, Seth, and his sister took us to a cheap restaurant, where I started drinking someone's beer. I continued to sneak sips from people's glasses as my mother and the runaways got progressively drunker. Evidently I passed out on the bathroom floor, for I awoke sometime later, alone and covered with vomit. Nobody took much notice of my little bender or even of such basics as whether we went to school.

Griffin and I attended only intermittently, walking there alone. Even at school we were isolated, seen as odd and unkempt. My one good outfit was an orange paisley midriff top with matching hip-hugging bell-bottoms, which my father had sent from Rome. I may have looked freakish next to my classmates, but I was proud.

I cherished that gift from my father and, even more, his attention on weekends when he was in town. However, his visits only highlighted the bleakness of the ranch and the vast difference between his life and ours. My father had become and was living like a movie Star.

He loved nice cars, so he would pull up in a maroon Maserati Citroen, which rose up and down, to whisk us from the dilapidated ranch to his Malibu beach house. I remember huddling with Griffin under the dashboard of the Citroen,naked, cold, sandy, and wet after one of those golden week-ends, feeling sick with misery at the thought of returning to the ranch.

My father was our knight in shining armor back then.

R325 Thanks for sharing

Farrah's Kleptomania was very well known.

Her 30-something mother had a 15-year-old boyfriend???

Sometimes we tried to escape the ranch literally, by running away. Stuffing our ragged clothes and whatever food we could find into a pillowcase, Griffin and I would make our way down the rugged dirt road, barefoot as always. Then the police would drive up and escort us back to the ranch—often as not, for a beating. My mother could be a harsh disciplinarian, but it was Seth who really scared me.

When Griffin and I misbehaved—or when Seth felt like it—he'd whip us with switches cut from the fig tree. Often we were beaten for stealing from the Jolly Jug, our local general store. We would take candy, because we were so hungry.

Much as I feared Seth s rage, his switches and his fists, I had enough fight in me to try to stand up to him. But my resistance only seemed to heighten his wrath, so my legs were always black and blue from his beatings, and my back was scabbed over. Once when he came after me, I ran to my mother, clutching at her, begging her to not let him beat me—if need be, to punish me herself. She did it, with her belt.

Seth was bad, but I utterly despised one of his cronies for other reasons. One night, when I was hiding out in my mothers bed during one of her drunken parties, he crawled in with me and started groping, pushing his fingers inside me."Doesn't that feel good?" he demanded, I was only six. The memory of his prod-ding sickened me for years, and it is only in adulthood, after years of therapy, that my sense of violation has begun to ebb.

It's a measure of how out of control our lives had gotten that my mother would continually leave us alone with strange men. One of them forced me to examine his genitals, then actually tried to penetrate me—a tiny child. Mercifully, he couldn't stay hard.

R329, please in that family it could have been a son, cousin or brother.

When I grew older and knew more of the world, I came to see my mother in a different light. But back when she was my whole world, I hated her for her weakness, for making us live in squalor, and for exposing us to cruelty.

There were periods when I felt completely overwhelmed—even worried about my-self. Watching a TV show on which an animal died, I burst into tears, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably, consumed with grief. I adored animals but was so freaked out at one point that I actually tried to kill a cat—knowing, even in my child's mind, I was committing a terrible act as some kind of cry for help. (Luckily the cat escaped without harm.)

Griffin claims that I once climbed a tree and dropped a knife down on him, slicing his face. As I recall, it was an accident, but it's anyone's guess why I had a knife in a tree. Griffin still has the scar.

Even at five and six years old, I knew that my mother's view of our lives was distorted. She was so out of touch that despite the sexual abuse, we continued to socialize with Seth's pals and his extended family.

As IF OUR LIVES weren't bad enough already, early in 1971,a massive earthquake struck the northern San Fernando Valley......

After the earthquake, my grandparents and my father began to monitor conditions at the ranch more closely. Appalled at the goings-on in what my father condemned as "a poisoned environment," they began working behind the scenes to get us out.

By the time I was seven my mother had begun to acknowledge her amphetamine addiction. She checked into Camarillo State Hospital, a well-known mental institution out in "canyon country," to try to beat it.

When my mom was released from the hospital, I spat in her face. She called my reaction "the most painful experience of my life . . . like having a child die."I deeply regret my behavior, but at the time she seemed so cruel to me.

For the next few years, I barely saw my mother,and for much of that time, I even completely lost track of Griffin, my "Irish twin."I have one indelible image of them from those lost years.

On Thanksgiving Day, when I was about eight, my mother showed up unannounced at my dads Malibu beach house. She had Griffin with her in the station wagon, -with a huge roasted turkey, with all the trimmings, that she'd prepared for us.

When she got out of the car, she was weaving, obviously drunk. My father went crazy at the sight, shouting, "What the fuck are you doing here?'

He picked up Griffin and stuffed him back in the station wagon. Then he slammed the turkey platter out of my mothers hands, grabbed her shoulders, and screaming, shoved her into the driver's seat. Her feet were still dangling out of the car, and as I looked on in horror, he slammed the door, right onto her legs.

"Now get going!" he bellowed.She started the car and edged it back out onto the Pacific Coast Highway. It was one of the busiest roads in California,and I was terrified that she'd get sideswiped.

Inside the house,my father was on the phone to the police, describing the car,telling them to pick her up for drunk driving.My father's outburst shocked and scared me more than I dared to articulate. The force of his rage was overwhelming,yet I desperately needed to believe in him. I had already determined to move forward in life without a mother.

AFTER THE ISOLATION and chaos of the ranch, I felt out of step with the more civilized world—unsure how to navigate,how to talk to people, how to react. Even simple daily hygiene was confusing, for I'd rarely been bathed and had never brushed my teeth, which were full of cavities. Taken to the dentist for the first time, I went wild when he tried to give me novocaine—I'd been promised "no shots"—and kicked him in the head and the balls, trying to escape. My father had to wrestle me back into the chair.

What a bloody piece of shit Ryan O'Neal was and is. Nothing redeemable about this monster. I hope he rots in hell. Jesus fucking Christ, pushing a woman out into traffic when she's drunk, with his son in the car, and then calling the cops. I fucking hate this asshole.

Oh, and he ruined Barry Lyndon. Ruined it.

Who the hell fucked Billy Joel? Tatum or John McEnroe?

My grandmother took on the task of taming me, transforming me from a bruised and scrappy boy-child into a girl. I still remember the way she bathed me, grooming my ragged and dirty nails, and tucked me into my first proper bed, with clean, sweet-smelling sheets. She gave me my first doll and put me in little dresses, assuring me that I was pretty—which I didn't believe. She was the first truly loving female presence in my life.

I used to stare at her, studying her makeup—pale face powder and deep red lipstick—her white outfits and gloves,and the way she wore her hair, in a sleek, elegant bun. Her speech was measured, with a cultivated English accent. She seemed amazingly feminine compared to my mother, with those lopsided wigs and false eyelashes flapping half unstuck. I also marveled at her relationship with my grandfather, which would last for thirty-eight years.

I had never known my own parents as a couple.I loved her immaculate home in the Pacific Palisades, surrounded by the beautiful gardens she planted, and her great home cooking, a powerful antidote to fast food. I still make her tuna fish and her fried chicken, which my kids adore. In memories of that time, I associate her with a lot of laughter: zooming up to visit her on the back of my fathers motorcycle,

My grandfather was big and handsome and affable, but my grandmother was definitely the matriarch of our family, the thread that bound us together. Shortly after we left the ranch, Griffin and I were sent to Tree Haven boarding school in Tucson, Arizona. It was the first structured environment I'd ever experienced, and the culture shock was profound.

Academically I lagged far behind my classmates, and socially I was totally lost, with really no idea how to communicate with the other kids. I tried to attract friends , by reminding people repeatedly, "My father is famous. My father is a movie star."Needless to say, that strategy didn't work.

Soon I fell back on an old feel-better habit—stealing—and got caught snatching some earrings from a classmate's drawer. In the principals office, I was spanked with a perforated wooden paddle, which was more unendurable and humiliating, coming from a stranger, than the countless beatings I'd received at the hands of Seth and my mother.

Finally, in utter misery, I chopped off all my hair. I mailed the cuttings to my grandma, along with a letter—a full page on which I'd scrawled over and over, with childlike spelling, I hate it heer, I hate it heer.

Griffin remembers my rescue better than I do. He was watching from the window when a big black limousine kicked up dust on the school's dirt road then circled around the fountain at the entrance. My father got out with Peter Bogdanovich and a woman, but no one summoned Griffin.

The next thing he knew, the car was pulling away again, and I was in it. He had been left behind—and from that point on, his life diverged from mine.

WHERE I WOUND UP was even better than Sunset Boulevard—my father's beach house in Malibu. He was renting a place on LaCosta Beach. (A year or two later we would build a home of our own a few lots over.) It was a modern two-story house with a white-rock roof and a window wall with sliding glass doors, which opened onto a beachfront deck.

My father occupied one side of the house, where he set me up with a half bed in a tiny room, and on the other side lived Greg, a tall blond artist who was his best friend.The house had all the trappings of a swinging bachelor pad, with a mirrored bar, a pool table, and a stereo always blar-ing the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Al Green, or James Brown.

Greg's collages adorned the walls, along with a movie poster for Play It As It Lays, which starred his girlfriend Tuesday Weld. He and my father hung out in cutoff jeans, smoking grass, which they told me was an herb, like parsley.

My father grew a bushy mustache,wore an army jacket with an American flag, and carried a shoulder bag with a pot leaf applique. It was a classic 1970s hippie scene, on a fabulous backdrop of sunshine, sand, and surf. I loved it. I'd never been so happy.

Every day I paddled for hours in the ocean. For the first time in my life,I made connections with other children: Monique LaBoie,who became my best friend; Michele Walker, daughter of the actor Robert Walker Jr.,; and Maria Dylan, Bob's daughter. I remember going over to her house and seeing her father, the rock icon,snoozing in his underwear.

At home, I became a little entertainer, amusing my father and his friends with my newfound skill shooting pool. Once,playing hostess, I dropped a huge tray of food in my father's room, splattering it everywhere. It got to be a running joke in our house, "Hey, who got coleslaw/Coke/ketchup in my eye? . . . Tatum?"

Not surprisingly, since I was living with two handsome bachelors, there was a steady parade of women passing through. My father was divorced from Leigh Taylor-Young soon after my brother Patrick was born, and I became the telephone screener for his girlfriends.

When women called, I was instructed to say he wasn't home—that he was out running or whatever—but often I got confused. That led to some funny exchanges, for example:"Hi, Tatum. How are you? Is your father there?""No, no, he, uh . . . went running.""Ah. Well, did you get the strawberry lip gloss I sent you?""Oh! Hold on. Dad, did I get some strawberry lip gloss?"Scowling—half-joking and half-serious—my father would stomp over to the phone. "Hi. I just got back. How nice of you to send Tatum a present . . ."

It was John McEnroe who fucked Billy Joel while married to Tatum.

This is how the typical Irish family is. Bullies and drunks.

The Billy Joel John McEnroe gossip is way more shocking than everything said about Ryan "father of the year" O'Neal.

Tatum O'Neal had an insane Hollywood childhood. That's unfortunate, but she is in no way an admirable person. And at the height of her child star fame she behaved like any other spoiled brat, expecting people to defer to her and obey her every command. I remember some tabloid story on her long ago that claimed she was "the biggest Hollywood brat since the Dead End kids."

John McEnroe did not fuck Billy Joel. Tatum spotted John on TV with a groupie at a Billy Joel party.

I once mentioned on DL, how when I was working in PR, we signed an actress from a television show (her name escapes me now, and the show didn't last too long), and we started getting calls from Farrah, asking for said actress' phone number. We couldn't give out client information so we relayed the message to call Farrah. I didn't know what all that was about until another client told me that the actress was a coke dealer.

At that point, I often did sleep in my father's bed, even when he had women over. I clung to him, terrified of abandonment, and he did little to discourage my dependence. Emotionally I was pretty rocky—tantrum-prone, dauntingly headstrong and outspoken—and I still stole, though less often.

There was some worry among the adults that I might set fires. The worst thing I did was take a collage Greg had labored over for days and cut it to shreds. What prompted that destructive impulse I couldn't have guessed. Later my father would say in print, to my chagrin, that Paper Moon 'answered the question of what to do with this strange little girl I was living with."

Originally Paul Newman and one of his kids were being considered for the film, which was based on a best-selling book, Addie Pray, by Joe David Brown. When Peter Bogdanovich was first offered the script, he wasn't all that keen on it. Polly Piatt, his then wife, encouraged him to reconsider, "I know who should play the little girl," she said.Polly clinched the deal by reading him passages from the script, imitating what she called my ' whiskey voice." "His eyes lit up," as she tells it now, "and he said, 'We'll do it, and Ryan will be the father."'

That led to my beach-walk audition. Afterward I left the grown-ups talking and went swimming, not even realizing that I'd had a tryout and had gotten the job. When I finally learned that I'd be making a movie, all I could think was, Now I'll never have to go hack to school again. I was ecstatic.

R335 R339 R341 John McEnroe/Tatum did not fuck Billy Joel.

From the book : "I STAYED BEHIND with the kids in Malibu at one point when John made a trip to the Far East. Flipping through a tabloid paper, I came across photos of John and Billy Joel in Hong Kong, apparently out drinking with some U.S. Marines. In one shot a big hand was grabbing at a lens, and in another John was snatching a camera away from a photographer to rip out his film. There was also a woman in the picture."

"I have no doubt that Ryan was raised by abusive assholes himself. "

STOP making excuses for Ryan by blaming his parents. Tatum said in the Howard Stern interview they were nice, and read her description in R336. Ryan became an asshole by early success, entitlement and drugs. The End.

Then I started worrying. My legs bowed in, giving me knock-knees. What if I had to get braces on my legs? Would they still let me be in the movie? It was my grandmother who soothed my anxiety, assuring me that my legs were line, that they'd straighten out as I grew up.

However, disaster struck one day when I was playing with Monique. We used to do gymnastics in her bedroom, jumping off the bed to grab a chin-up bar. I bounced up, reaching out for the bar, but missed—and when I landed, I heard a sharp crack. I crumpled on the floor, filled with overwhelming dread and clutching my arm in pain. This is it, I thought. If my arm was broken, and I knew it was, I was going to wind up back in school—and my dad would be sooo mad.

Monique's mom, Ricky, called my dad, who ran over and carried me home. For the next week, we kept testing out my arm, trying to pick things up but failing. When I didn't seem better, my father took me to the doctor, who X-rayed my arm and stuck the image on the light box. "See that?" he said,pointing to the fracture.My arm was broken, all right. With that I got hysterical

.The months of living with my father were the happiest of my short life—with no fear, no beatings, no hunger, no neglect—just eating well, soaking up the sun, making and enjoying friends, and even feeling loved. In my mind, a broken arm meant that I was doomed to confinement, In-stead of getting on a plane for an adventure with my father,

Luckily, that didn't happen. In what seemed like a flash, I was headed to Hays, Kansas, with my arm in a sling.

....At one point, my father, who rehearsed with me, said,"Let's run lines," and I said no."Why not?" he asked.

"I don't want to get stale."

"Stale?" He was amazed. "Who taught you that word?"I said, "I don't know," but I knew instinctively that it was true—and that I'd have to trust my instincts in order to play Addie.

When I got outside in the field, under the big arc lights, the opening scene, I didn't feel scared at all. Even at that age,I felt very connected and perfectly calm, like I I knew what I was doing. I understood this little girl.

.Peter wanted me to smoke in the movie, but the cigarettes were filled with lettuce, not tobacco. They glued sandpaper to my fingers so I could strike a match one-handed. . The minute Peter yelled "Cut," I would jump out of my mikes—we were all wired up while we were shooting—and climb up to be with my pals on the crew on their flatbed truck. That drove my father crazy, because he'd have to wait for me to be remiked before every shot. For the most part, he stayed patient.

Our most challenging long shot took place in a car traveling ... The whole shot rested on me—not only did I have pages of dialogue to deliver, but I also had a lot of stage business, fiddling with the map and other things while my father pretended to drive. If either of us blew a word or gesture, the car couldn't back up. They'd have to haul it all the way to the end, where there was room to turn around, then head back to the starting point to try again.The first day we did a grueling twenty-five takes, partly be-cause of my clowning around.

"Ryan was freaking out," Peter recalled. "Screaming, 'Tatum, goddamn it.' At the end of the first day, he came over, put his arms around me, and said, 'I can't, I can't, I'm gonna kill her.'"We finally got it right a few days later, after another fifteen takes. Peter would later surmise that the scene in the car ultimately won me the Oscar, because the Academy judges recognized how difficult it was for someone so young.

When I wasn't working, I was stuck in a hotel in Hays with the rest of the cast. I shared a pair of connecting rooms with my hired chaperone, Diane, the soon-to-be wife of Hedgemon Lewis, a famous boxer from Detroit whom my father managed.My uncle Kevin later made a documentary called The Contender about Hedge's struggle to capture the welterweight title. Ultimately, Hedge lost out to the Cuban boxer Jose Napoles, so the film was never released.

I was never the kind of child you could plunk down infront of the TV. But I did love movies and watched them compulsively from the time I started living with my father. He never tried to restrict the movies I saw, whatever their ratings.It was his way of educating me, and it's left me with a pretty comprehensive knowledge of film.

Though the other grownups thought it was weird, he let me watch, Cold Blood,which scared me to death, during the making of Paper Moon.

For a while, I had a playmate, sixteen-year-old P.J. Johnson, who came from Texas . I loved her, and she taught me some cool Soul Train dance moves. But when I was on my own, which was most of the time, I got into mischief. I'd wake up early in the morning and start knocking on people's doors, looking for companionship.

"Go away!" they'd yell. "I'm sleeping. Leave me alone." I'd make my way dejectedly down to the lobby, where there was a~big telephone switchboard. I messed with it all the time,wreaking havoc on the phone system.

Since I was so bored and lonely, I began to wonder how my mother was doing. I hadn't spoken to her in ages. I knew Griffin had left boarding school and gone to live with her, but I was still angry and a little afraid of her. I'd heard plenty of negative talk to the effect that she was a drug addict and a bad mother. But then I came across a Photoplay magazine with a headline like "Ryan O'Neal Steals Daughter from Joanna,"

At one point during the shoot, when I wasn't getting along with my father, I screamed at him: "It's true—you stole me! You stole me from my mother!'

'He drew back, cocking his fist, and for the first time, I believed he was actually going to hit me. Peter held him back,and the moment passed. Still, his show of temper shook me up. I loved my father so much. It was the first crack in our golden relationship.

I turned nine while we were making Paper Moon, and the cast and crew threw me a party on the set. They even had a cake set up on a prop table. I'd never in my life felt so warmly embraced, that I was part of something and truly belonged.

PAPER MOON HAD its premiere in New York City. My father and I stayed at the Pierre Hotel, where we'd race in the halls.We had so much fun. Sometimes he'd count off, "On your mark, get set, GO!" and then stick out his foot and trip me.One day when we were running up Fifth Avenue to the hotel,he slipped and fell, sliding along a sidewalk grate on his butt.

"Hahaha, you big handsome actor," I screamed. "You always trip me, and now look at you, sliding!"My father started laughing wildly, right along with me. We were both so exuberant then that it was okay—even fun—to goof on stardom.

Later my father took me to Bloomingdale's and bought me some red high-heeled platform shoes that I'd seen somewhere and set my heart on. I was too little to wear even the smallest adult size, so we had to get a sample pair.However I must have looked, with my skinny little knock-kneed legs, I felt very grown-up teetering around in them.

The premiere itself was more of a blur. I remember that I got a big ovation, which was thrilling. Then the press was all over us, and I didn't know how to cope.

Coming from an acting family, I didn't see filmmaking as unusual, and no one gave me the sense that I'd accomplished anything special. Even my own mother didn't make a fuss over me. In our first phone conversation since our estrangement, she praised my father's performance but said that mine seemed "cold."

But I soon picked up on the fact that I was the focus of every interview, at my father's expense. The recognition made me very uneasy. He was all I had, and the thought of losing his affection—of facing another abandonment—was more than I could bear.

He began to make snide little jokes, to belittle me and undermine me in ways I couldn't quite grasp. In the press,he played the doting father, but in his eyes I read the truth:deep resentment that his own brilliant performance was being dismissed. I soon started getting such bad stomachaches that the doctors thought I had ulcers.

Fascinating and heartbreaking.

It's obvious that Ryan started hating/abusing his daughter since her Paper Moon success.

My STRETCH OF FREEDOM and happiness couldn't last. As soon as Paper Moon wrapped, my father left for Ireland to make Barry Lyndon with Stanley Kubrick. He was to live abroad for the next two years.I was devastated. For my father—my lifeline, my rescuer,the one I looked to for stability and love—to simply pick up and move thousands of miles away, across the ocean, was an unthinkable betrayal. Not only did I feel profoundly abandoned, but on a practical level, I had nowhere to go. I was only nine, I was estranged from my mother, and for some reason couldn't live with my grandmother, whom I loved.

The most convenient option was the one I dreaded most: sticking me back in boarding school.This time, it was a different place, the Ojai Valley School,about an hour's drive from Los Angeles. Thin and gawky, with my hair still boy-short from the movie, I was an ugly duckling,which made me fair game for teasing. My childhood was so different from my classmates'—little formal schooling, and unconventional family, I felt like an alien.

I was much more comfortable with adults than with other children.I tried to ingratiate myself by telling outrageous tales. One great one was the claim that, while I was swimming, a shark had bitten off my ear; I even showed off my fake "replacement." I also said I had a horse ranch, which was a powerful fantasy of mine. When no one believed me, I called my father and put one of the doubters on the phone. "Oh yes," he confirmed, at my insistence. "Yes, she does."

These lies did nothing to enhance my popularity. Instead I was scorned and picked on, ganged up on, even despised. Kids can be terribly cruel. I did make one friend, Carrie Earle, but much of the time, I stayed holed up in the quarters of the dorm mother, Mrs. Quill, crying and playing with her dog Mouton.

Then came the opening of Paper Moon. Suddenly I was a bona fide movie star, and everyone wanted to be my friend. I'd never experienced such hypocrisy before, and it shook me up.Being hated was miserable, but my newfound popularity was worse because I knew better than to believe in it. It left me feeling that there was no one I could trust.

This book is very depressing.

I looked forward to the Christmas break, when I would visit my father in Ireland, hoping more than ever that I could beg him to pull me out of school. My FRIEND CARRIE came with me to Ireland, It was thrilling, and so was the manor house where my father was staying, which looked like a castle. We were sure the place was haunted.

To welcome me and Carrie, my dad had a room all decorated with posters of Rod Stewart and Marc Bolan. However,it soon became clear that something had changed in the father I'd missed so badly.

He was always cranky and preoccupied,and he seemed determined to pit me against Carrie. He'd stage footraces between the two of us and then cheer her on."Wow, look at those legs. Carrie, you're so fast! You're such a good runner—so much better than Tatum!"

Jealous and confused because she'd somehow gained my father's favor, I took out my frustrations on Carrie. "My dad paid for you to come here," I'd tell her. "And I'm bigger than you, so I'm the boss."

So we fought a lot during that trip. I did succeed in one thing, however. I managed to persuade my father to let me stay on with him after Carrie returned to the States.

My faith in him had been rocked when he left for Ireland and then again during the Paper Moon publicity and Carrie's visit. I badly wanted him to love me again.

But rather than honor my need for fatherly affection, he seemed to lump me in with his other "demanding" women,making me feel like the lightweight in a tug-of-war for his love. Of course, the harder I had to tug, the more needy and possessive I got.

Ryan O'Neal's headstone: Love is never having to say you're sorry.

One of the film's locations was Dublin Castle, which caught the attention of the Irish Republican Army. Outraged to see even a fictional representation of English troops on Irish soil, they sent death threats to my father and Stanley.

As a result, the whole production had to pick up and move to England. My father rented a house in London and sent me to live with the Kubricks, whose youngest daughter, Vivian, was just a few years older than me.They lived outside the city in a big old Gothic house on the moors.

The place was a little eerie but also wonderful because they had lots of dogs and books. I started reading for pleasure,for the first time, while I was there. The walls were lined with the beautiful artwork of Stanley's wife, Christiane, who encouraged my efforts to paint and draw.

At dinner I copied the way they used their knives and forks, and at night I found it curious to sleep European style, as the Kubricks did, under down comforters with no sheets.

Stanley impressed me tremendously. My dad had all his movies screened for me alone, in one sitting, when I first got to Ireland. I loved Stanley because he always spoke to me like an adult, discussing things like the reason he always drove a Mercedes—"It's the safest car in the world"—as if they were perfectly natural concerns for a nine-year-old.

He'd ask me questions and listen intently to my answers. Now and then,though, I'd catch him looking at me a bit askance, as if I were an odd little thing. Often, around that time, without understanding why, I got the sense that people were starting to feel sorry for me.

Stanley and Vivian were very close, which I envied, given my shifting relationship with my father. I had first met her in Ireland, where we would take long walks on the beach, laughing and playing and talking. Vivian seemed so exotic, with her dark Russian looks, her poise and her humor.

She was musical, she wrote and spoke beautifully—in short, she was everything that I was not: gorgeous, amusing,and educated. Yet I felt an identification with her because we both came from offbeat, bohemian families. She was a person I could aspire to be. I totally idolized her.

Unfortunately, my adoration didn't endear me to Vivian for long. She was nearly a teenager and I was too much younger to hold her interest. Once I moved in with her family, the tension between us increased. Vivian seemed to find me wild and rough around the edges, and she made no secret of her annoyance. "Tatum," she'd scold, "that's not how you say it. You've got to say it like this. . . ." She constantly put me in my place with "Tatum, what rubbish!"

Even years later, when I'd write her heartfelt, loving letters, her replies would always be full of corrections: "Tatum, that's not how you spell it!"Her criticism always embarrassed me, making me feel stupid. We squabbled a lot, and I once stuck gum in her hair. She got her revenge by offering to trim mine and then practically scalping me.

But there was more going on between us than childish fussing. Vivian's charms weren't lost on my father, who had started to set us at odds. "Vivian's so talented," he'd say. "Tatum read and write." Or "Vivian, you're so beautiful, so graceful, so funny, so smart. Tatum, you're just a silly little girl."

My father mesmerized full-grown women, so it was no wonder that twelve-year-old Vivian fell for him. He was so handsome, funny, and seductive that she developed a deep and desperate crush on him. I began to worry that she tolerated me only as a conduit to my father. Worse yet, her crush didn't seem entirely unrequited.

While I'm sure they never had any sexual contact—my father never had a thing for young girls—he evidently relished her affection enough to keep pour-ing on the charm.When Vivian told Stanley about my father's flirtation, he was outraged. I never heard what he said to my father about it,but they had some kind of falling out. Stanley later dropped my father as the narrator of Barry Lyndon.

'As for Ryan’s other son, Patrick, “he does fine—he has his own show on Fox Sports—but I don’t like him either. He’s not likable,” Ryan says.'

Looks like Patrick finally found some balls and told Ryan off.

R360 Ryan said that quote about Patrick in Vanity Fair article in 2009

Nowadays, Patrick is kissing his father's ass and claiming he was a good father and attacking Tatum for picking on her "good" father.

Vivian sounds like a cunt.

What could Ryan have done with Vivian to make her father so enraged,?! I highly doubt some innocent flirtation would make Stanley so angry or even make Vivian tell her father. I'm guessing at least there was kissing.

These O'Neal tribulations play out each and every day in all our lives. One day I may be Tatum desperately seeking a parent's approval and tomorrow you might be Ryan having a mental fit. But the moral of this story is beautiful people suck.

I can tel you're mot a woman, R363

I can tell you never learned about spelling, R365

Cue the sequel to Tatum's book where she reveals that Ryan O'Neal molested her in 3...2...1 after the old bastard kicks the bucket.

R303 Don't just blame the woman carrying the child for the child's fucked-up development. Male and female rug users have damaged DNA which while toxic to themselves can definitely be passed on to their child. Ryan contributed his half of the fucked up genes no doubt further degraded by years of substance abuse once he and Farrah procreated.

JESUS CHRIST, I USE RUGS, NOW WHAT R368?!?

R339 WHAT?!?!?!

John was also fucking Armand Assante while he was with Tatum.

You just can't trust rug users. Sorry, not sorry.

Do we know why he left Griffith behind? I'd always thought that he only took Tatum because she was going to be in the movie, but this makes it sound like he took Tatum long before Paper Moon was even being thought of.

*Griffin

Ryan's will is going to result in a war between Tatum/Griffith vs. Patrick. Or Ryan will just leave everything to Patrick, or being the asshole he is, Ryan will leave it to some random organization, shutting them all out.

He'll leave it all to the ass cancer institute.

Take away the fame, fortune, privilege, and opulence of their existence and they are any other dysfunctional family on the planet, including mine. I can safely say that the aforementioned adjectives must have made Tatum's existence much more bearable than mine, so fuck her, fuck Ryan O'Neal, fuck his other fucked-up kids, and fuck all the whores he fucked. Professional victim/incest/daddy issues. The end.

:-(:-(:-(:-(

:-(:-(:-(:-(

R377 Calm down

R376 Read R346

R275 R376 Yeah to Farrah Fawcett Foundation and most probably he will leave something to Patrick to keep the good father BS alive.

Soon, I will start a thread about Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett from Ryan's book "Both of Us". To get Ryan's side of the story/events.

OP don’t break the spell!! But tell me quickly, have you done this for other books too?

R383 / OP thanks for this thread, was a fantastic read and I can only hope for more! TYIA!!

WTF is a rug user?

Yes, thank you, OP for a great thread. Really fascinating stuff.

R377 is obviously off his meds.

If Redmond is still alive when Ryan goes, I'll bet he'll get a huge chunk of the estate. No matter what a useless fucked up criminal he is, Redmond was and is the loyal son - and always has been. Patrick, like Christina Crawford, will be surprised he's left out or gets peanuts. Tatum and Griffin already know there's nothing for them.

I wish OP would not post from Ryan's book, or do it in separate thread. His book is a PR suck-up, not worth being in this thread.

Ryan and Ali MacGraw at the London premiere of Love Story, before drugs, when he was at his cutest, age 30.

Fat f*** from the beach!

Fat f*** from the beach!

She met the Queen with me!

She met the Queen with me!

R388 It will be a separate thread as I said in R383

Thanks, R393. I love these excerpts. Which book are they from, Tatum's first or second or both?

R394 From Tatum's first book, A paper life - 2004

Redmond O'Neal Blames Recent Arrest On Parents, Not Drugs

“It’s not the drugs that have been a problem, it’s the psychological trauma of my entire life—my whole life experiences have affected me the most,” O’Neal revealed to RadarOnline. “Fighting with my father, being kicked out and living on the streets, going to jail, being put in a psychiatric ward, being embarrassed all the time, just because of who my parents are.”

The celebrity son has been charged with six crimes following the incident, including assault, drug possession, second-degree robbery, possession of a smoking device, and possession of an injection/ingestion device.

At the time of the arrest, O’Neal reportedly had heroin and methamphetamine on him.

“The pressure that came with that set off a time-bomb in my head. I never asked for any of this, I never wanted any attention,” he said.

“This last arrest, something happened to me. I’m not doing good. I can’t go back, no way can I go back. I just can’t do it,” he said. “I hated prison, it wasn’t good. I don’t do well in there. In my mind, I’ve lost all hope.”

Bye bye inheritance, Redmond!

He probably won't live to see any inheritance.

Redmond's inheritance will be donated to the United States Penal System

[quote]I'm sure Barbra was/is saying the same about Ryan abusing his daughter. That Tatum was thrilled to be around her father and after all, it didn't kill her, she was married and had children!!

I think for people who didn't grow up from the 1950s through 1970s, it's difficult to imagine just how disconnected and unconcerned adults were when it came to children. Kids would leave home at 16 and never be in contact again and no one really said much about it. They were unsupervised, given alcohol and drugs regularly, and it was considered mostly normal for teens to be groupies or sleep with celebrities. The people who were aghast at young girls partying and sleeping with big stars were "uptight prudes."

That was a big reason we had the pedo-in-every-corner Satanic Panic of the 1980s, I think. It was backlash after people realized kids were going missing, getting raped and molested, and getting murdered at a terrifying rate.

A lot of the reason people nowadays (like Babs and Angelica) say that it wasn't so bad for the kids is because they just never moved past that 1970s hedonistic culture. They didn't mature or keep up with society or even reflect on what they'd done in the past.

It was interesting to hear Ursula Andress show concern for Tatum in a way that the American girlfriends didn't.

R400, that post is just bullshit.

R400 while i agree that parents were much more disinterested in parenting at least during the 70s, no one was expecting their young teen to run off with a rock band or run away. Kids as 18 year olds often left to make their way in the world but it wasnt typical for them to go completely off the radar forever.

What r400 is referring to is that teenagers/young people in the late 60s and 70s joined cults. It was really a very serious issue. Even Armisted Maupin made it a part of "Tales of the City". It was a cultural mark of the 1970s.

I used to feel bad Howard Bannister had to endure Eunice Burns.

Eunice was too good for him.

I grew up in the 7Os. While there were plenty of wealthy parents who ran off for the weekend and left $100 for the kid(s), I still call bullshit on the never seeing them again. YMMV.

I'm Not justifying Ryan's poor parental skills by any mean. But I think that many Hollywood actors are narcissists and very bad parents as well, the difference is that Ryan's kids didn't have good mothers to live with (except for Patrick, that's why he turned out okay), Tatum and griffin's mother was totally crazy/unfit and Farrah was nuts and an addict. Again, I'm not justifying Ryan's behavior with his kids but I really think if other Hollywood actors were given the responsibility to solely raise their children, the outcome probably would be similar to Ryan's kids.

Tony Curtis comes to mind, he was self absorbed and wasn't meant to be a father, and gave some of his kids drugs but the difference is that his kids were raised by their mothers who were Not crazy.

Random thought here. I wonder if they would have done better if they became Scientologists. At least they would be off the drugs, or then again maybe not.

Random thought here. I wonder if they would have done better if they became Scientologists. At least they would be off the drugs, or then again maybe not.

Kids who had one non-celebrity parent had better childhoods, definitely.

And R403, you're exactly right about cults, but I also was referring to the rock and Hollywood scenes being full of kids in almost professional roles. Rock critics like Chris Welch and Paul S. Williams started their jobs when they were teens, and Cameron Crowe's experiences in Almost Famous were autobiographical. The baby groupies were photographed and celebrated in magazines. Meanwhile teenage girls in Hollywood were heavily sexualized on screen and off, like Brooke Shields, Tatum of course, Jodi Foster, Mariel Hemingway, etc.

As for the unofficial job of groupie, no one really expected their kid to run off and become a groupie, a roadie for a band, a teen disco queen hanging out at 54 and pretending to be 18 or anything like that, but it happened a lot, and there wasn't a lot of press about it being bad for the kids or even being that scandalous.

Generally speaking, actors don't know how to be friends and they shouldn't be parents.

They just act at it.

Ryan put his kids into boarding school more than once but Tatum insisted to live with her father, Tatum and Griffin were already fucked up by their mother.

Why didn't the grandparents who she loved take them in?

R413 Tatum said although she loved her grandparents , she didn't want to live with them. She loved the exciting glamorous life of her father . When they sent her to boarding school again, she rebelled and cut her hair and sent letters to her father and grandparents saying "I hate it here".

The downfall of these kids that they didn't have any responsible parent. I honestly don't put all the blame on Ryan. Their mother was too crazy, even worse than Ryan.

r413, Tatum said in the book -- excerpted somewhere in this thread -- that when her father was going to be staying in Ireland to shoot the Kubrick film she was going to have to go back to boarding school and didn't understand why her grandparents wouldn't keep her. I'll tell you why - she was a borderline sociopath - attempted to kill a cat, stole things, made up lies, set fires. Not sure how much of that is in her DNA or was triggered by the neglect and abuse in her very early childhood development.

"She loved the exciting glamorous life of her father"

You make her sound spoiled. Tatum wanted to be near her father, she wanted his parental affection. There were lots of bonuses in Ryan's movie star life, but f he was a garage mechanic, she'd want to be with him there too.

That her grandparents could not take her full time may have to do with them not able to take care of a child, age being a possibility. I know my kindly grandmother on my father's side couldn't do it at the age I am now - 64!

Is Tatum still dating women?

Is Tatum still dating women?

R418 You know better, Rosie

Let's read John McEnroe's side of the story:

From You Cannot Be Serious book by John McEnroe : 2002

I went over and introduced myself, even though no introductions were needed. I knew very well that Tatum O'Neal had been the youngest person ever to win an Oscar, in 1974, for Paper Moon. I knew she'd starred with Walter Matthau in The Bad News Bears, which I'd thought was an excellent movie as well. I was all too aware that her father was Ryan O'Neal, the Tom Cruise of his day.

Was I overly impressed? A bit starstruck? Maybe Tatum was, too. It's a funny thing when two well-known people meet: There's an immediate magnetism

Our eyes had locked, we were physically attracted, and we each knew and liked what the other had done. And we were both searching for something. Maybe my fiery spirit reminded her of her father's own famous temper. For my part, I liked her confidence, her total ease in the midst of this star-studded evening. She wasn't even twenty-one yet, but she had the poise of an experienced woman.

While the party boomed and buzzed and milled around us, we sat in a corner, talking and talking and talking. From time to time, she leaned over and whispered something funny about this person or that person around the room. The conspiracy was sexy, the whispering was sexy, and the way she smelled when she leaned close was sexy, too.

And so at a certain point it felt quite natural to kiss her. She smiled. I kissed her again.

That was as far as it went that evening. But as I drove back down through the purple hills after the party, Tatum's phone number scribbled on a scrap of paper in my pocket, my heart felt full for the first time in a long while

Still, some deep part of me felt that I was out of my depth in the star-world of Los Angeles. And Tatum knew that world like the back of her hand; she was nonchalant, almost jaded, about it. I thought she could help guide me through it.

Was I looking for the love of my life? I don't know. I was searching for something. In a sense, finding her then was a matter of timing as much as anything else. I was just sick of feeling empty. I wanted something more than money out of all I'd accomplished.

I thought Tatum could help me, and I thought I could help her. The more I got to know her, the more she seemed like the perfect partner for me. I thought she was a young woman coming into her own. As the daughter of a famous father, and as someone who had had early success and a tough time afterward, she had obviously struggled with her identity. Now she was trying to break out and find herself.

Tatum told me she was planning to leave Los Angeles and move to New York. She wanted to make a clean break from her mother and father, who had been divorced for a long time, but who each continued to have a bad influence on her. She wanted a fresh start

I was more attracted to her all the time. She had grown up a bit of a tomboy, so she did certain things unexpectedly well—she was an excellent pool player, a great Frisbee thrower, a good skier. She was very easy to spend time with: In some ways, it was like being with one of the guys.

She talked constantly about her father. I began to feel I was in a strange kind of competition with him: that what Tatum was really looking for in me was a better version of her dad. I eventually came to feel that Ryan was a very manipulative guy, but when I first met him, he could be extremely charming. He was the type of guy who could walk into a party or Spago and wow a room—you could practically hear an announcer saying, "Here's Ryan O'Neal!" He would crack jokes and tell great stories and tell you how terrific you were. And you'd say, "Man, this guy is wonderful company."

And then there were moments when it seemed he could tear your head off. I sensed that during one of the first times Tatum took me up to Farrah Fawcett's place in the Hollywood Hills. Her father was living with Farrah, whom Tatum hated. I got the feeling that he and Farrah were so obsessed with their looks that they'd spend the whole day doing fanatical workouts. I remember seeing Ryan running on the beach all the time—the guy would run for five or six miles, but he wouldn't eat the whole day; he'd get the munchies, but still he wouldn't eat, and then he'd take a steam or a sauna and sweat some more. . .

So by the time they said, "Do you guys want to come up for dinner at six?" Ryan was probably at the point where he'd eat anything! Besides which, if you go through a day like that, you're probably going to end up incredibly angry.

We went to the house, and he said, "Let's play racquetball." Before dinner.

I'd only tried racquetball a couple of times in my life, but never with anyone who really knew how to play. I was in my jeans, he was in his shorts, and I saw right away that he was pretty good. I could see immediately that it was a game of angles—that you could hit the ball in the corner where it wouldn't bounce, and that was how you won points.

Ryan would hit a shot and plant himself right in front of me. Now, if you hit the other guy in racquetball, you're supposed to play the point over, so I was forced to lob the ball to try and keep it away from him— then he'd put it away.

I thought, "God, this is screwed up." But he kept doing it! I could have put welts in his back, but I never laced into him, because I thought, "I'm not going to risk getting into a fight with this guy." And I lost, something like 21-18.

In retrospect, it's lucky that I didn't get into a fight with him—he was crazy about competing in general, and he'd been a Golden Gloves champion as a kid. There were also a few times he put on boxing gloves with me. I'm lucky he didn't punch my lights out.

I caught him in good moods. He'd sort of let me hit him, and he'd just bob and weave, and after a minute my arms would get tired. His build was the opposite of mine— he had a big upper body and skinny bird legs, and I have big legs and a small upper body. I didn't think that boded too well if the boxing ever got serious.

But nothing boded well, now that I look back on it. The first time Tatum and I made love, we were high, and it was terrible.

Shouldn't that have told me something?

Tatum said, "Let's go up to Farrah's place." I don't even know why she wanted to go up there—I think it was just because she knew that Farrah and Ryan weren't at home, and we happened to be close by. It wasn't a particularly romantic occasion. We were jittery, a little paranoid. We both seemed to be feeling, "Let's just do it to do it, so we can say we did it, and then we'll know we mean something to each other, and we'll really get into it when we're in a better frame of mind."

We went up to the house, up to the guest bedroom. It was very cold in that room—it felt like forty degrees! The combination of the cold and that weird buzz ... It was just awful, not an especially good start. The truth is, though, I was as responsible for it as Tatum.

It wasn't as though she was saying, "Please, let's do drugs." I was the guilty party also. In fact, in retrospect, I believe she was trying to get away from all that: That was part of her reason for wanting to move to New York. Her mother, in particular, was in horrible shape. Tatum was trying to escape from what felt to her like some sort of terrible destiny

Tatum and I spent Christmas in New York, then flew back to L.A. for New Year's Eve. That night, we and a few friends went out drinking, then later, the two of us were back at Ryan's house, playing pool with Tatum's half-brother Patrick. By now it was three or four in the morning, and I had to fly to Vegas the next day to get ready for an event. Finally, I said, "Look, I've got to go to bed."

Tatum stayed up, drinking and playing pool with Patrick. I don't know when she came to bed, but it probably wasn't until six or seven. At around eleven A.M., I nudged her and said, "Listen, I'm going to Vegas. Do you want to come?" I had had enough of L.A. and partying, for the time being: I was a tennis player, I wanted to go play tennis.

I was sure Tatum wouldn't get out of bed, because she'd been up all night partying. But she did. She got in the car and went with me. We were together now, for better or worse

Fast-forward to February of '85, after I'd had another five high-earning years. Now I could afford to buy that beach house! And not just any beach house, but Johnny Carson's, on the Pacific Coast Highway at Carbon Canyon Beach in Malibu, for $1.85 million plus three tennis lessons that Johnny insisted I throw into the deal! I was thinking more and more about making Los Angeles my base of operations: I loved the beach;sitting and staring at the Pacific surf at sunset made me feel at peace more than almost anything else I knew.

Unfortunately, though, I also wound up bringing Tatum back into the very environment she was trying to leave. She was struggling to get away from her family, and living just down the beach from her father, who exerted a powerful negative magnetism, didn't help matters.

My idea was that Tatum and I should have a baby. It just seemed so right —having children was something that had been on my mind for a while. The other thing that crossed my mind, I have to admit, was that maybe if Tatum got pregnant, she would clean up her act. Maybe it would force us both to clean up our act.

Ryan playing handball

And then the night before the semifinals in L.A., we found out that Tatum was pregnant. It was very strange: That same night, Tatum's mother cooked us a very rich casserole for dinner, and then the next morning, I literally couldn't get out of bed. I was sick as a dog, and I had to default the semifinal. I was in bed through the weekend, and was able to play San Francisco only because the tournament had a Wednesday start, but I was still sick enough there to lose to Kriek in the quarterfinals.

I don't know if I was reacting to the casserole or to Tatum's news, but it was bizarre: In a certain way, I was totally happy. I was going to be a father! Whenever I was able to stop retching, I couldn't stop smiling

When I finally admitted to my mother that Tatum was pregnant, the first words out of her mouth were, "You're going to get married, right?" I said, "Yeah, of course"—even though, to tell the truth, marriage was never the first thing on my mind. I knew I wanted to have a family, but back then, I wasn't sure whether the formalities mattered to me or not.

Pretty soon, though, I realized that they did matter to Tatum, and before I knew it, I was promising my mother that we'd be married in the Catholic Church. Tatum actually sort of tried to become a Catholic for a while. She met with a priest, took instruction: It eventually petered out

This is where I have to remind myself that as difficult as Tatum could be, I didn't make things any easier. Instead of going on a honeymoon— which, God knows, you should do when you get married—we went to a tennis tournament. We were married on a Friday, and the following Monday, we went up to Stratton Mountain—it was like, "Quick-quick-quick, let's get married, because I love you and want you to know I'm committed, but now I've got to go play tennis."

We finally went on our honeymoon, to Hawaii, at Christmastime. At last I had given myself time to put aside all the nonsense that had taken place from August to November: It was as if I had taken a deep breath and said, "OK, let's start the new year fresh and just kick some ass."

We were staying on Oahu, at the home of a Japanese man I'd met playing golf. On New Year's Day, we woke up to a glorious Hawaiian morning, a velvety blue sky, and a fresh breeze blowing. And Tatum turned to me and said, "I'm pregnant."

"There goes nineteen eighty-seven," I said.

There WAS A wedge between us. It wasn't just my undiplomatic comment; it was the sentiment behind it, which we both understood: I felt I had blown 1986, and I couldn't afford to blow another year.

We hadn't intended to have another child right away, but we hadn't been trying especially hard not to have one. We were just kids, really— mature beyond our years in some ways, quite young in others. Tatum had just turned twenty-three in November, and I was still twenty-seven. We had had to try for six months before conceiving Kevin, so it had stuck in our minds that making a baby was never going to be easy for us.

I seriously wondered whether we should go ahead with the pregnancy. Tatum asked me what I was thinking about, and I said, "Are we prepared to deal with this?" She couldn't stand the question, let alone the answer.

When we weren't locked in long silences, we began having screaming arguments.

All couples fight—couples need to fight—but our quarrels were nasty, and they escalated fast. We both had tempers, and Tatum was no shrinking violet. She was a tomboy from a tough household: Her father was a frustrated boxer, and her brother was quick with his fists. As our relationship grew more contentious, I noticed that whenever I raised my voice, she would flinch, as if I were about to hit her—except that I never had, or did.

I think she compared all men to her father, which put me in a tricky position. At first, she saw me as a better version of Ryan, but as things became tougher between us, the comparison got less favorable. She said then and later that I bullied her, but the truth was, she always gave as good as she got.

It got harder and harder to feel good about the pregnancy. In the last three or four months of her pregnancy with Kevin, I hadn't played tennis at all, which had made it much easier for us, but I didn't feel I could stop playing now, because I was trying so hard to come back. I was starting to develop back problems because of the tension; I was having trouble just focusing.

Then, in early February, something happened: Tatum started bleeding profusely. Our doctor told us that this kind of bleeding led to a miscarriage about 20 percent of the time, so I began to prepare myself for the possibility. Just before the bleeding had begun, I'd still been thinking, "Are we ready for another child?"—but when I took Tatum to the doctor, to my amazement, I suddenly burst into tears. I realized how much I wanted this child, and how frightened I was of losing it. I felt tremendous relief when it turned out that everything was okay

Tatum was due to give birth right around the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, and—if it was possible—I was more on edge than I'd been the whole year.

I couldn't not play the tournament. Skipping Wimbledon had been a big enough gesture—I wasn't about to announce my retirement.

I was trying to get my tennis career back on track; Tatum, barely out of adolescence at twenty-four, was trying to figure out who she was, and what it meant to be a mother.

She didn't have the strongest of foundations on which to build a sense of motherhood. Her own mother had had such problems with alcohol and pills that she'd barely been present when Tatum was little; for a time, Ryan had carried most of the burden, to the best of his limited ability, while pursuing a full-time acting career.

As Tatum told it, though, once she'd entered her teens, her father seemed to lose interest in fatherhood, especially after he'd gotten together with Farrah Fawcett, who appeared lukewarm at best about being a stepmother, surrogate or otherwise, to Tatum and Griffin. Once Ryan moved to Farrah's place, Tatum said, she and her brother were frequently left alone in their father's beach house in Malibu

And now here she was, alone much of the time with two small children of her own, and back in Malibu.

She was still very conflicted about her work—or her lack of work. Her acting career had tailed off pretty sharply after she came out of her teens. The transition to adulthood is perilous for every child actor: Very few make the jump successfully. As a young woman, Tatum just couldn't seem to bring the same charm to the screen that she'd projected as a little girl, and even as a teenager. She'd finished her last movie, Certain Fury, just before we met—it had vanished quickly, to the relief of everyone involved in it, including Tatum, who refused to do any press or publicity for the picture

Sometimes she thought it would just be a good idea to leave it at that. She would often say, "Will you love me if I never work again?" Trick question! I wanted to say that I would feel fine about it, but if she then decided she did want to work, I didn't want to be the one who had told her, "You can't do it."

The one thing I felt strongly about was that I never wanted both of us to be working at the same time. Even that was tricky, though, because I made up my schedule every September for the coming year, and acting jobs tended to come up on the spur of the moment. I wanted to plan out well in advance when Tatum might be working—but I didn't think agents, producers, and casting people were likely to be very concerned about my tennis schedule.

At the same time, Sean's arrival made all of that academic. With two babies in the house, Tatum couldn't suddenly turn around and tell Hollywood, "OK, I'm ready to work now"

Still, she continued to be conflicted. With Sean's birth, she had naturally gained weight, and in the months afterward she seemed obsessed with taking it off. She had grown up in an environment where being thin and beautiful meant everything—employability being one of those things—and she'd suffered terribly when she'd gone through a chubby phase as an adolescent. In the first months of 1988, I kept feeling worried that her obsession about losing weight was taking her back to bad habits she'd cultivated as a teenager.

I suggested that she try working with a trainer again, and because we were friendly with Madonna and Sean Penn, Tatum hired Rob Parr, a trainer who had worked with Madonna. Madonna was thin and successful—maybe some of that would wear off on her.

Moderation was never one of Tatum's strong points, though. Soon she was training like a maniac, lifting weights and running six miles a day. She was in amazing shape, but I felt concerned when she started complaining about knee problems. I said, "I think you're running on pavement too much." She kept going anyway.

And she kept feeling frustrated that work wasn't dropping into her lap. Part of her knew that if she wanted to get acting jobs, she would have to go out and try hard for them—but with two small children at home, she wasn't in a position to do so.

She blamed me for this, and I just saw it as our life. Later on, when things got much worse, she would say, "Oh, John doesn't want me to work," which wasn't true. I didn't want her to be filming while I was playing Wimbledon, but I did try to be supportive.

In fact, in a way, our situation was ideal, because it allowed her to feel her way back into acting without the pressure of having to make a lot of money. Couldn't she be happy about developing her craft and gradually establishing herself as a mature actress?

I said, "Look, financially we're in pretty good shape. I'm not winning, but I'm still making the same money I was in eighty-four. You haven't worked for a while. Why don't you start small? Work with good actors in small projects, so you can be around them?"

She would snap at me then: "Who the hell are you? I'll do what I want." And then she'd go up against the hottest actresses of the moment, Demi Moore and the like, and she'd get rejected every time

One night we had dinner with Madonna and Sean, during a period when I'd been pestering Tatum about taking acting lessons. "I can't not practice and then think I have any sort of chance of winning Wimbledon," I told her. "You've got to work at your craft." I'd say that over and over—I'd try to be the sensible guy. She'd brush me off: "What do you know about movies? You're an athlete."

Then, at dinner, Madonna said, "You know, Tatum, there's this great acting class I've gone to—you should give it a try."

"What a great idea!" Tatum said.

I sat there thinking, That's what I've been saying the last three years, but thanks for taking credit.

Then Madonna told her, "You can have a career and be a mother, too—you can do it all." I couldn't help thinking, What the hell do you know about it? You re the most career-obsessed person I've ever met in my life. Not to mention that she hadn't even had a child at that point!

Tatum kept auditioning and auditioning, and never getting any parts. A little while later, after the movie Working Girl was a big success, someone decided to do a TV series based on the film, and Tatum tried out for the lead role. She decided to do her reading in a heavy Brooklyn accent, and the producers said to her, "We want to give you the part, but come back tomorrow and just speak in a normal voice."

She went back—and did the same accent again. I thought, "Why would she do that?" The only answer I could come up with was that somehow, she really didn't want the job—or to work at all

One night in the summer of 1990, Tatum said, "What about a third? Want to go for the girl?"

I was back from another tournament. Kevin was four, Sean almost three. I felt as if we were just beginning to get a grip on our lives. "I don't know," I said, hesitantly.

"Come on," she said. "What are you, chicken?"

I said, "Chicken? You're the one who's got to go through it, not me. And you're the one who's always talking about how difficult it is to have a career. Do you think having another child is going to solve that problem?"

As it turned out, the conversation was academic. Emily Katherine McEnroe was born on May 10, 1991. At first, we felt, "This is perfect; we've finally got two boys and a girl. This is the answer." But then we found it wasn't the answer.

Maybe we were too spoiled. We had more than enough money, and fame, and we enjoyed the good things that money and fame brought us. At the same time, we aspired to live like normal people, and that just wasn't possible. It seemed that there was never enough calm in the house.

Too often, Tatum was upset and embarrassed by my latest outburst on a tennis court—and the outbursts got worse as the tension at home increased. My answer to all this was to over-indulge in marijuana. I thought it would relax me and help me appreciate my life more. Unfortunately, it often had the opposite effect.

It was very confusing—in our way, we were both trying to be good parents and good partners to each other, but her career was in eclipse and mine was in decline, and you need to feel reasonably good about yourself before you can be kind. We loved our children, but it felt harder and harder all the time to come up with any kindness for each other. . . .

My motivation suffered from a combination of having kids and, for lack of a better term, going Hollywood. Appreciating the good life. I couldn't seem to focus as intently on the job at hand. It became less important to be number one—so I settled for number four. I was still making a ton of money; I was still the biggest guy in tennis. I just wasn't the best guy. Yes, I might have lost a step, but before, I had always found a way to do what it took with what I had. My ferocity had gotten me there. Now my ferocity seemed like something I had to unlearn if I was going to be a good husband and father.

I tried, hard. In my darker moments, however, I sometimes wonder why I went to the effort, because it ended so badly. Sometimes—I can't help it—I feel as if I wasted my time. Ultimately, I have no one to blame but myself. I'm the one who chose that life, that wife. Nobody made me do it.

I naively believed that this person actually thought along the same lines as I did—and maybe she did, for a while. In her own way, Tatum tried hard, too, but ultimately she just didn't have the wherewithal to bring it off. She was so young! We were so young. As angry as I get, I do feel for her—when I can get through the anger.

I was away from home for two and a half weeks on that Australian trip, the longest I'd ever been away from my kids, and I missed them badly. I flew to Hawaii to meet my family and prepare for the first-round Davis Cup tie against Argentina, my debut as a doubles specialist. As soon as I saw Tatum, however, I noticed she was acting odd around me. I chalked it up to my long absence, but the feeling hung around over the following weeks and months.

It was my last hurrah. My Wimbledon result had lifted my ranking from 30 in the world to 17, but I had to face the fact that I wasn't winning tournaments anymore. That summer, I told Tatum, "If I don't win a big one this year, I'll stop playing. I'll step back and allow you to step forward."

She couldn't let go of the idea of rekindling her acting career. In September of 1992, an interviewer had asked her about her dream for the future, and she said, "I guess it's that when John's tennis career is finished, he takes care of the kids while I make two pictures a year and get to pick my scripts and work with whomever I want, and that our kids go to great schools and live happily ever after."

I wanted to help Tatum feel fulfilled, but we should have talked about that dream for the future and tried to get on the same page. It was close to my own dream, I guess—I certainly wanted a lot more to do with taking care of our kids than I had had to date—but she had overlooked the restlessness of my soul. My years as a touring tennis professional might have been coming to a close, but I never wanted to stop doing things, and if that meant travel, then so be it. Once that bug is in your blood—once you're used to moving around the world and feeling important—I don't know if it's ever possible to come to a full stop

I would learn to appreciate staying at home—once I had a happy home. But my home wasn't happy now. From this distance, the anger and desperation between the lines of Tatum's dream are painfully clear.

Then, with things between us completely unresolved, I'd have to go off to events for weeks on end. It had been fun when I was young and single, but now I felt a wrench in my heart. I was agonizingly lonely—it's not an excuse this time, but a fumbling toward an explanation—and I did things I wasn't proud of.

And I never knew just what Tatum was doing back at home, or who she was spending time with. I mostly tried not to think about it.

One night, Tatum called from New York (once Kevin and Sean had started preschool, we'd decided to move back east, keeping Malibu as a West Coast base) and, in the course of the conversation, mentioned that she was planning a fund-raising event for Bill Clinton. It would be held at some artist's studio, and Stephen Stills was going to play. . . . "Uh-huh," I said. "That sounds nice." I was half-listening to the usual music of a domestic conversation, when suddenly Tatum spoke three words that changed my life forever. "You're not invited," she said.

Now I was paying full attention. "I'm not invited?" I asked. "Why not?

She hastily tried to put a better face on the situation. "You can come, but I'm sure you wouldn't even want to," Tatum said. "It's just a bunch of people you wouldn't be particularly interested in—I've only invited a couple of friends of mine, from acting class."

Friends from acting class —the phrase stuck in my head. Now I was thinking about things I didn't want to be thinking about.

Then, almost absurdly, she mentioned that her mother had been in a car accident, and had lost a couple of fingers.

Then, almost absurdly, she mentioned that her mother had been in a car accident, and had lost a couple of fingers.

I started laughing. I couldn't help myself. It all sounded so crazy. Her poor mother, Joanna Moore, had had such a sad and disordered life that almost no possibility seemed too strange. "What's the next thing you're going to tell me?" I asked.

Tatum got furious—I can't say I totally blame her. "How dare you be so insensitive?" she shouted.

I tried to smooth things over, but I sensed it was far too late for that.

When I flew back from Australia, I rented a car and drove to Palm Springs, where Tatum's mother lived. Joanna had indeed lost two fingers— to this day, I'm not sure it had anything to do with a car crash. The story was that she had gotten off at an exit, gone through a guardrail and over an embankment, and plunged twenty feet to the bottom of a gully—and that she'd been completely uninjured except for the loss of the fingers

As I sat with Joanna, the talk turned to Tatum and our difficulties. "Tatum is going through something, but you've got to stand by her," Joanna said. "You've just got to stand by her—it's going to be OK." She seemed to know a lot more than she was saying—certainly a lot more than I knew. I left feeling profoundly unsettled

We spent the rest of October in chilly silence: Tatum had clearly made up her mind. At the end of the month, we decided to separate officially—I couldn't stand the thought of a divorce, even though I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that there was no other next step.

I was devastated

The news of my separation had leaked to the press—a couple of photographs of Tatum out kicking up her heels with new friends had fanned the flames—and it was all the reporters wanted to talk about.

People magazine, with Tatum and me on the cover, and the caption, "End of the Love Match." I picked up a copy in spite of myself—I couldn't help it—and read the article. I can't even remember the piece, it made me so angry: The thrust appeared to be that the end of the marriage had mostly been my fault, for holding Tatum back from her career.

About a month into our separation, Tatum and I went to the premiere of the movie Malcolm X, in Manhattan. We were still living in the apartment together, with the kids, even though we weren't staying in the same room. It was a very strange time, I didn't know which end was up, and so when she suggested we go together, I said, "Why not?" I suppose that, just as I'd once harbored a secret hope, some hidden part of me held a tiny hope that Tatum and I would get back together.

I regretted going as soon as we got to the theater. What had I been thinking? There were cameras everywhere, titillated reporters shouting questions. For reasons only she could understand, Tatum was absolutely glowing that night, while my smiles were as fake as could be.

As soon as the lights went down in the theater, the floods started again—I sat there weeping, thinking, Why aren't we together? And, Why doesn't she feel bad, even if she does believe this is the right thing to do?

After the movie was over, Tatum looked at me with something almost like sympathy. "Someday you'll thank me for this," she said.

I wondered about that for a little while. Then I understood what she'd meant. I think she'd realized she was such trouble, and so incapable of being the wife that I wanted, that eventually I'd be happier with someone else.

At that point, though, I couldn't imagine being with anyone, ever again

I also resented the way she'd said it. While I was falling apart, she seemed to be feeling better about herself than she had in a long time, and so her words conveyed a certain superiority. It was almost as if she was drawing power from my weakness.

The last thing I felt like doing was sticking around while Tatum went through her latest phase of self-discovery. I wanted to try to work things out, or split for good.

After returning from the Grand Slam Cup, I told her I was staying in my apartment, and that if she, in fact, wanted to separate, she would have to move out. She did. It was over.

It's almost hard to understand from this distance, but at the time, I was shocked and devastated by how suddenly it had all happened. I did feel responsible, but at the same time, I felt furious at Tatum—how could she have made this decision when I had already told her I was going to stop playing so she could work more?

However, the question I kept asking myself over and over was, What had I been thinking in the first place? If it had all been meant to come to this, why did I ever think we could really function as a couple? I felt dumb, and it hurt. Love is blind, they say; now I really knew what they were talking about.

I'd thought Tatum was a diamond in the rough, that I was going to be the guy to polish her up and help her shine. Now it all just seemed idiotic.

McEnroe is so kind - to himself

I had never cried so much in my life—I would start thinking about everything, the tears would come, and I wouldn't be able to stop until I had cried myself out.

Almost as soon as I'd returned from Germany in December, Tatum had gone to make a TV movie—reinforcing the appearance that I'd been the one holding her back from her career. She'd insisted on taking one-and-a-half-year-old Emily with her for virtually the entire two-month shoot. I thought it was a huge mistake, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Kevin and Sean and I all slept in the same room together the whole time: Sometimes one of them would wake up and see the tears on my face. Then, one morning, Kevin said, "I don't want to see you cry anymore, Dad."

I walked out into the fresh air of 1993 and began my new life. Now that I was no longer touring, I had a lot of time to devote to ventures I'd begun earlier. One of them was broadcasting

The custody battle between Tatum and me had been protracted and ugly, and much of it got aired in the always-helpful tabloid press, which only worsened things, especially for the two boys, who were old enough to begin to understand what was going on. Tatum had tried to get full custody of the children, claiming that my emotional abusiveness—my anger problems, as differentiated from her anger problems—and my protracted absences for tennis business made me an unfit father.

Over and over during the proceedings, I said to Tatum, "Show me a single case where it says the mother should have full custody of the kids when the father is financially independent and not working a nine-to-five job." And there weren't any.

I had the research done because I needed to back up, for her and for me, what I felt in my heart: I didn't want to be a father who wasn't with his kids

Even after the court decided on joint custody, however, there were constant border wars between us about arrangements, and every time I said an unkind word to her, threats by Tatum to sue for custody because of my anger issues

..........I wondered: Was I selfish? A narcissist? Still? As a young and single tennis player, the center of my own world, I used to go to sleep at two a.m. and wake up at eleven, with nothing to think about but my practice, my meals, my match, and how I'd entertain myself afterward. As a young husband home from the road, I'd informed Tatum that I was available from seven in the morning until midnight, but that if anything arose between midnight and seven A.M., it was her problem. I needed my sleep.

With Patty, I had hired nannies so I wouldn't have to get up in the night if she couldn't

.Now I was finding out what it really meant to be a parent: waking in the middle of the night to comfort children, grappling with my own demons—and then trying to find energy during the day to handle the rest of my life. Had I been too tough on Tatum? Was I too self-involved for Patty? Was my perfectionism driving my family crazy? Were my kids doing OK? Would I ever learn to relax? Why was I running off to do a game show instead of sticking around to attend to the real (and thankless and overwhelming) job of taking care of our children—a job that Patty had given up her own career for?

I'd had an unsuccessful marriage; I'd been humbled in ways other than the gradual, inevitable deterioration of my career. I'd worked, harder than I'd ever worked before, at making a new marriage, at being a father. At long last, I'd actually begun to find myself. With any luck, I had a lot of future left in me

Ryan was said to be insanely jealous of Tatum's success. That's truly the mark of a shitty father who should have been born sterile.

Another one in the same category was Jack Cassidy who was said to be very jealous of his son's successes.

He wasn't going to stop playing tennis so that she could act - he was going to stop because he couldn't win tournaments anymore. He knew she wanted to act and he didn't want for the both of them to be working at the same time - so now was the good time for her to start acting again, in his mind. When would have been a good time for her? We don't know, he doesn't concern himself with that. He's number one.

I'm sure he meant well, but everybody and anybody always came second to his personal needs - as a tennis player I'm not going to rank him, he's far from a favourite. Good sports commentator, though. All talk.

Cassidy died in a fire in his penthouse apartment. He always struck me as gay gay gay... and not a little weird. May he RIP.

When does he get to the part where he fucked Billy Joel?

Tatum O'Neal would have been a much better choice to play Tess in the TV version of Working Girl over Sandra Bullock.

R288 Here's the answer from John McEnroe's book:

From R423 " In retrospect, it's lucky that I didn't get into a fight with him—he was crazy about competing in general, and he'd been a Golden Gloves champion as a kid. There were also a few times he put on boxing gloves with me. I'm lucky he didn't punch my lights out.I caught him in good moods. He'd sort of let me hit him, and he'd just bob and weave, and after a minute my arms would get tired. His build was the opposite of mine— he had a big upper body and skinny bird legs, and I have big legs and a small upper body. I didn't think that boded too well if the boxing ever got serious."

I believe John McEnroe left out a lot in his memoir.

Here's Tatum's response to his book during Barbara Walters interview

R445, as a tennis commentator, I've always felt that the egocentric McEnroe was paid by the WORD.

Allegra Huston On Ryan O'Neal:

According to Huston’s memoir, O’Neal snorted coke and threatened them with violence. “He is the most charming, delightful person in the world when he is Dr. Jekyll,” she says of O’Neal, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to felony possession of methamphetamine.

"[No violence] ever happened. It was all a threat. But when he told me, ‘I will throw you down the stairs,’ I genuinely thought he would.”

I've read the book back when it came out, but neither Ryan nor the mother cared that she was gone for weeks with Cher. Ryan bragged that she was staying at one of the best houses in Bel Air, that was it. Fortunately Cher provided food and clean clothes and wasn't a freak.

I remember Barbara Walters plugging that Tatum O'Neal interview on The View and Star Jones just holding your nose and acting like Tatum O'Neal was just a scum of the earth in regards to her using drugs. Star Jones is a judgemental b****.

R454 "Star Jones just holding your nose and acting like Tatum O'Neal was just a scum of the earth in regards to her using drugs."

WTF? Really?!

Yes, really. Star Jones ended up marrying a very obviously closeted gay man so who was she did judge anybody for their choices.

At least I didn't marry a fag, Star.

At least I didn't marry a fag, Star.

I remember Ryan and Tatum reality show, if anything Tatum seemed like a bit of a troublemaker. She just couldn't let it go and really kept digging. How could she expect serious introspection from a 70 year old man child is beyond me.

Ryan couldn't own his past mistakes but he expected Oprah to bless their show and she never did and he complained about it in the Press I'm not making this up.

,....

Ryan apologist at R459. What the fuck else was she supposed to do? The ENTIRE SERIES was supposed to be about Ryan's redemption.......only he didn't get that.

It's always Oprah's fault.

Why did/does Tatum hold Farrah responsible for ruining her relationship with her father?!! The relationship was ruined since she had won the Oscar and Tatum Knows that. She acts like she got dumped by some long-time boyfriend when Ryan took up with Farrah.

Simple. She stole her man!

Kidding. ;-)

I could see her pulling off a powerful emotional role, I hope Tatum gets a chance to shine again. I feel connected to her as I grew up in a dysfunctional myself.

R462 I know the whole purpose of this show was for Ryan to admit to Tatum that he was a lousy Dad. It was clear it was not going to happen. She needs to either accept it or just move on.

R465 No Kidding!

Well it's only a paper moon of a relationship.

R464, you Farrah worshiping idiot, Ryan left his teen children for Farrah - unsupervised. Farrah was a self absorbed airhead who didn't understand anything about children and wasn't interested in finding out.

Greg Lott needs to be on this thread like yesterday!

I always thought Patty Smyth totally lucked out marrying Mac. I mean, where was she going at that point in her career?

R470 unsupervised????

Tatum and Griffin were ALWAYS Unsupervised either while living with their crazy mother or father, (like staying at Cher's house for weeks or travelling with Melanie Griffith to Israel and wandering in strange countries alone, or having orgy with bunch of people at age of 12) It's not like Ryan was ever a hands on dad before meeting Farrah , He Never gave a fuck about what his kids did before or after meeting Farrah. That is a Fact.

So, seeing Tatum on that reality show still being so bitter (and even hateful) toward Farrah after all these years, was very strange. she even said to her therapist on the show, that she broke down (and attacked her father) after seeing a tribute for Farrah with Ryan because she remembered how she couldn't measure up to farrah's beauty! WTF is that!

What is the REAL story between Ryan, Tatum, and Farrah? Tatum's nausea at the thought of watching tribute video of her dad's ex was so telling. She needs a team of shrinks working 24/7 to get to the bottom of her dysfunction.

My heart breaks for everyone. Truly tragic!

The car scene described in R349.

These two should just fuck and get it over with!

2 good things about Ryan. He's not a racist and he's not a pedophile so far as We Know.

Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett's nanny :

Now Janette Moor has lifted the lid on her time nannying for the stars and revealed some fascinating insights into the lives of Farrah Fawcett, and her Ryan O’Neal.

that was around 1988/89. “I went up to meet them and they were fine. The ‘star-struck’ movie bit had worn off so I was not fazed by it all. She was lovely. She was always lovely. He was certainly not easy to live with. You could hear her shouting at the other end of the house.

“Her assistant Jimmy Toulson and I would just move to the other end of the house to escape it.”

Her duties centred around looking after their three-year-old son Redmond who she says, even then, was “a handful” – he went on to struggle with heroin addiction for much of his adult life and has spent time in jail.

She says: “He was a lovely little boy by himself but I remember once picking him up from nursery and the teacher asking to have a word with me.”

It turned out he had been using foul language. “Farrah actually put a bar of soap in his mouth to wash it out but of course it didn’t make any difference. But when he was with me he was fine, just a cheeky so-and-so. I had him until he was five years old.

“Farrah was a really lovely person and a very loving mum. She was always nice. Occasionally I would make them dinner if they had friends round and cook them Turkey Schnitzel and they loved that.

“They were very generous and very flexible and I had free rein to do what I wanted with Redmond. We went to Aspen for Christmas. I got to meet Candice Bergen, (an award-winning American actress) and feminist and Cybill Shepherd, an American actress, singer and former model.”

Janette smiles as she recalls “Ryan telling me off because I smiled too much and told me to stop pulling faces. I didn’t say anything. I just ignored him.

“They had separate bedrooms and he would be smoking his weed in his room. He was a very moody person and how he was depended on what drug he was on. He was either completely withdrawn or completely in your face and sometimes he wouldn’t leave you alone, just annoying. I just let it wash over me.”

She stayed with the couple for 18 months when she was 28/29 during the years 1988/89.

“Ryan and Farrah were fine when I left. It had got to the time when Redmond was in school and they didn’t have another nanny after me.”

Janette with Farrah and Ryan's son Redmond.

I don't trust Tatum's portrayal of Farrah in the book. Even her brother Griffin liked Farrah and said she was always a nice person.

Tatum's view on Farrah was/is distorted by her jealousy and bitterness, However I believe Tatum stories about her dad.

Anyone who saw Farrah on talk shows in her later years could see she was a fucked up mess. And that's forgetting her years of shoplifting. Some mother!

At 33:08 of the biography video below, The director of Tatum's movie "Little Darlings", talked about Tatum being difficult during the filming, he said they called Ryan who came to the set and talked in private with Tatum, and after that she opened up and everything was fine.

I wonder Why Tatum didn't mention this in her book? I know it's not a big deal of a story but I noticed she focused only on the negative stories.

Ya think Tatum ever scissored with Kritsy McNichol on the set of Little Darlings?

R249 The car scene that Tatum says won her the Oscar.

I have to say, she was pretty incredible! (He was good, too).

Sorry. That was for R349

I remember Ryan and Tatum reality show, if anything Tatum seemed like a bit of a troublemaker. She just couldn't let it go and really kept digging. How could she expect serious introspection from a 70 year old man child is beyond me.

It was a reality TV show. 90% of what they did was scripted.

I could tell McEnroe was a mental case long before he married Tatum. He came off like a mentally ill lunatic or serious drug addict in most of his interviews. His very manner of speech just reeked of insanity.

Watching a few Ryan clips he seems so upset and always lashing out, a perfect example of the term 'fuss budget.'

First, I've never met Tatum but I have met John. The John in the book is nothing like the man I experienced.

He was/is a loud mouth bully and an asshole. And this was later in Connecticut.

After reading all of this I am now convinced that the relationship between Tatum and her father was sexual.

Her behavior gives it away. Really ugly stuff.

The more I read though, the less empathy I had for her.

He took love means never having to say you're sorry and ran with it.. He doesn't seem to be sorry about anything he did. Even punching out his own son. He can justify anything. I remember the first time I saw him on The Tonight Show he was with Naomi Judd and she was fangirling all over him and he was as dismissive and cocky as he could be with her. Really weird.

But Ryan does seem to have a nice cordial relationship with Ali McGraw. I wonder what's up with that? He must present an idealized side of himself to her like the way he was in the movie.

I will say this though, he is a good actor but he doesn't give himself enough credit for that. I wonder what he thought of Ali MacGraw getting an Oscar nomination for Love Story and him getting nothing for his whole career. It has to sting a little bit. At the very least he's way better than Warren Beatty who's a stiff as a board in most of his films but he was showered with nominations and awards especially for directing.

Has it been mentioned on this thread that he blamed his family for possibly causing Farrah's anal cancer when it was probably his cheating that gave it to her? Has it also been mentioned that Farrah was hooked on antibiotics as detailed on the autopsy show on the Reelz channel?

Oh and by the way I wish the nanny had kidnapped Redman because she seemed like a good Soul who could have set him straight.

Fun fact (I hate when people say that), Paper Moon was filmed in the dead of winter and everyone was freezing without coats.

More like a paper bag.

[quote] Has it also been mentioned that Farrah was hooked on antibiotics

How can one be hooked on antibiotics? Did you mean narcotics? I can see someone being emotionally addicted to antibiotics, but I can't see a physical addiction to them as possible.

I do remember seeing Farah a few times when it was obvious she was doped out of her mind.

I don't know why exactly she was hooked on antibiotics all I know is that she was hooked on antibiotics. Which of course had an effect on her immune system in a battling her cancer. She also did not want to wear a colostomy bag and avoided a necessary surgery that might have lengthened her stay on this Earth

Say what you will about Farrah but she really suffered at the end. I have nothing but sympathy for her. The way she was betrayed by people in the medical field who sold her medical secrets was just terrible. She protested how she was treated by them and had some laws changed apparently in regard to patient confidentiality. She was a good soul who should have stayed with Lee Majors. Perhaps she craved the drama that Ryan provided Lee seems pretty laid-back as it goes.

She willed her College sweetheart Greg Lott $100,000 .He says he was the love of her life not Ryan.

....

R490 The more I read though, the less empathy I had for her.

Why?!

"After reading all of this I am now convinced that the relationship between Tatum and her father was sexual."

Tatum's constant bitterness and jealousy from Farrah until now, makes me wonder about that.

R491 Ryan was nominated for Oscar best Actor in 1971.

It looks like English is not R491's first language.

Ditto about "hooked on antibiotics," that's nuts. Other error - BOTH Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal were nominated for Love Story, that was "it" for both of them, nothing to be jealous of. Ryan was a TV actor who go lucky in movies. He was not capable nor interested in producing or directing like other pretty boys in his age group like Beatty and Redford. That Ryan probably wanted very badly to be nominated for Paper Moon, and I believe he should have been, made Tatum's win all that much worse. No excuses for his behavior.

Griffin and Tatum's different descriptions of Farrah - Tatum may have always been jealous but I believe her. If Farrah had an ounce of maturity (and sobriety), she would have left Ryan and gotten that kid Redmond out of the house to get away from Ryan's abuse. He may have been abusive, she was negligent. Keep in mind that Griffin's main beef is with Ryan, not Farrah, and the Larry King interview was after her death. I have a feeling people will be much kinder to Ryan after his death.

R483, it's called an acting lesson, not worth mentioning in her book.

r497 Like anybody who keeps returning to an abusive relationship, at some point it becomes a choice.

The book which I find well written should have been her catharsis. Story told, moving on.

She did a scripted reality show with him instead. Tatum doesn't strike me as a stupid woman, in fact quite the opposite.

To misquote the great Evie Harris: "He doesn't love you." "You're welcome."

I can't how Farah staying with Lee Majors, a former Kentucky pass-around boy for Rock Hudson and his pals, would have done her any good. Having a closet case husband can't make for a good marriage.

I was wrong about Ryan getting an Oscar nomination I realized it before I came back to the thread I was going to say something but thank God for you good people for correcting me before I had a chance to do so.

Whoever made fun of my grammar please know I'm talking into a tablet and it doesn't always come out perfect sorry about that.

Angelica Houston didn't seem to like Tatum in her biography book "Watch me", She said Tatum was not a child, she was more like a cunning adult.

R500 I agree, Tatum in Not dumb, she's pretty smart but with an extremely fucked up life. I truly hope Tatum has moved on by now, and if she wants to have a relationship with her father, she should just accept him the way he is, She will Never change him.

Tatum response to Angelica Houston's description:

Didn't Anjelica Huston [Ryan O'Neal's former girlfriend] say that when you were 12 you were like "a cunning adult"?

For sure. I was far too mature for my own good. I really wanted to be an adult. My parents weren't cut out to be parents, period. At the same time, I did have an incredible life.

Still chuckling about the thought of Madonna's suggestinon of getting acting lessons to Academy award-winning Tatum O'Neal. Madonna is like the worst actress in the history of cinema. All of the acting lessons in the world couldn't help her. I'd like to see Tatum O'Neal in a comedy I think she would do well in that genre but no one seems to want to give her a chance. Too much baggage.

Tatum O'Neal can't believe Bruce Willis was rude to her:

And the most disappointing?

Off the top of my head, I'd say Bruce Willis. He was so rude to me I was shocked. Usually people are respectful to me just because I've been around so long, but he wasn't. He seemed to be very taken with himself and his own celebrity. He was such an ass I couldn't believe it. He thinks he's special. He's not a cool guy.

"I'd like to see Tatum O'Neal in a comedy I think she would do well in that genre but no one seems to want to give her a chance. Too much baggage."

Tatum's baggage is what makes her interesting - what makes people interested in seeing her, hearing what she has to say. She has never been much of an actress and probably wouldn't be any better with ten years of acting lessons. Acting is not the way to go, and she, at almost age 56, should realize it. I don't know why her job choice has to be in public, her name doesn't carry any weight unless it's about her family. Any other kinds of employment ideas for Tatum?

R506, She reminds me of her father saying this shit!

I'm sure it must be annoying if someone was rude to you, but the way Tatum put it, she sounds so entitled, its like how dare Bruce ignore me, doesn't know who I'm?!

"Usually people are respectful to me just because I've been around so long"

Fuck off Tatum

R507 "her name doesn't carry any weight unless it's about her family. "

I agree, Tatum's "career" is basically based on talking about her fucked up childhood, trashing her dad , writing books about it and even doing reality show with her "estranged father".

R503 I agree that Tatum was cunning as a young girl But Angelica is disgusting, I won't be surprised if she saw Ryan having sex with his daughter and said nothing.

Tatum relapsed after the reality show in 2012:

Tatum O’Neal Is Back In Rehab After Cocaine Relapse

Tatum O’Neal has voluntarily checked back into rehab after having a full-fledged cocaine relapse last month, The Academy Award winning actress, 48, has battled an addiction to drugs for most of her adult life. Her younger brother, Redmond, is also currently in rehab, in Southern California for an addiction to heroin. The siblings are not in the same facility.

“Tatum made the decision to voluntarily check into rehab after having a relapse about a month ago when she began using cocaine again.” an insider close to the situation tells RadarOnline.com.

However, Tatum is at a rehab facility that doesn’t follow the 12 step AA model, which doesn’t bode well for her success, according to the source.

“Tatum is doing really, really bad at the facility she is at. Tatum isn’t at a 12 step based treatment program, and that is a huge problem because someone with Tatum’s addiction needs to be at a rehab facility like Betty Ford or Cirque Lodge which adhere to the 12 step model,” the source says. “Tatum is essentially in denial about how bad her addiction is. Tatum is refusing to embrace the 12 step AA model to get sober.”

That story is from 2012!

R512 YES, I said it in my post "Tatum relapsed after the reality show in 2012"

Tatum wanted to do a reality show with Rosie O'Donnell in 2015:

2015

Rosie O’Donnell and Tatum O’Neal have been dating for just a few weeks, but they’re ready to cash in on their relationship: RadarOnline.com has learned that the couple has been offered a deal for a reality TV show — and they’re considering it!

Even though the couple has been together for less than two months, “A production company has expressed interest in doing a reality show with Tatum and Rosie,” a source told Radar. “Tatum had done a reality show with her dad, Ryan, and even though it caused headlines for all the wrong reasons, she loved doing it.”

“Rosie, however, is very hesitant to do a reality show because of all the turmoil going on in her life,” the source continued. “She’s facing health problems, an ongoing custody battle and legal issues with her adopted daughter, Chelsea.”

“But Tatum has been pushing for the show to give Rosie a platform to reveal her side of the story.”

O’Neal only recently publicly revealed she was a lesbian and a family sources told Radar, “Some doubt the sudden change in her sexuality. Tatum will do anything for attention.”

I had to stop reading. Depressing as fuck

R515, many of us “of a certain age” were raised with some of this type of drama, or had friends who experienced it. Remember, this was pre-sobriety, pre-self-help, pre-therapy, pre-codependence.

We grew up in a fucked up era. Many uses alcohol and drugs to cope. My father was drafted in Vietnam, he came home a different man, and his drinking eventually killed him. But even within that, he had a cool life and I have many fond memories.

Having said all that, Tatum really does need to let her old man go.

It's very obvious that Tatum's other Major problem, aside from her fucked up relationship with Ryan, is her constant disappointments over failing to regain her very early success/fame and to be in the spotlight . Notice how every time she "publicly" relapse, it's after a career/spotlight disappointment:

Her heroin addiction in the mid 1990s, post divorce, after struggling to get acting roles.

Her drug relapse in 2008, after nothing happened in her career following her tell all daddy dearest book and making the talk shows rounds with the likes of Oprah and Larry king, and then a brief failed Dancing with stars appearance.

2012 relapse, after the reality show with her father and another book (also about her father) flopped .

I'm not being harsh on her, but she should really focus on living a healthy life and forget about acting and spotlight and stop cashing in on her daddy issues, because she has been talking about this since 2004.

I'm sure after Ryan's death, she will write a third book about her relationship and life with him.

Signs that allude to possible incest:

Father/daughter shared a bed

Father/daughter are addicts

Father/daughter had few boundaries around sex

Father made repeated comments about sex with daughter

Father was mentally and physically abusive

Father was misogynistic

Shall I keep going?

Their reality show was A mess!

Hot Tub Therapy

R519 This guy is deluded and not right in the head. She must stay away from him if she wants to remain sane.

Tatum and Griffin both had the double bad luck of having Ryan, a raging narcissist, for a father, and Joanna Moore, a raging drug addict for a mother. It's rare that children can come out of a family like that unscathed, even when all the money in the world is at their disposal.

[quote]With typical loyalty to my dad, my grandmother turned on me. "Your father didn't do anything wrong," she said. "It was you who created this whole scene. You're in love with Ryan. Did you sleep with him?"

Guys, THIS is why she couldn't stay with her grandmother ^^^

[quote]How can one be hooked on antibiotics?

Sounds like she developed a dependency on antibiotics because of chronic sinus infections. From there, she could have created a major problem with her own intestinal flora and perhaps even caused her own problems. There are several intestinal conditions that respond to antibiotic therapy, but the gut flora doesn't always stay modified after antibiotics, so people keep taking them and taking them and eventually their flora is irrevocably altered in a bad way. If she was taking a bunch for "allergies" like she says in this interview, then she could have actually caused problems with her intestinal tract that later came back to haunt her during her cancer.

If there was no sexual incest, There was certainly an emotional incest where the parent attributes the child with a partner-like role. That's why Tatum can't get over her dad leaving for Farrah until now.

Interesting Q&A with Kevin McEnroe about his novel, Our Town, based on his grandmother Joanna. He discusses his own experiences with drugs, as well as his grandmother's and Tatum's.

[quote]The car scene described in [R349].

Ryan almost flubbed a line.

This is so Fucked up.

I'm beginning to think that her role in Basquiat as the vapid -unsure-of-green paint trophy wife, who is only ridiculed by her husband was written specifically for her.

I'm beginning to think that her role in Basquiat as the vapid -unsure-of-green paint trophy wife, who is only ridiculed by her husband was written specifically for her.

Drugged Farrah Fawcett on David Letterman -1997

Ryan O'Neal insisted that Farrah was not "loaded" and was only acting silly!

Trump and Ryan should get together. They have a lot in common.

She should be on one of those real housewives shows. She would be perfect as a victim as well as provocateur.

Mom

Off topic, But what ended Ryan O'Neal acting career???!! I know he wasn't a great actor but wasn't bad either.

[quote]But what ended Ryan O'Neal acting career???!! I know he wasn't a great actor but wasn't bad either.

Pretty boys don't age well. But he had a recurring role on Bones.

oh god oh man oh god oh man!

Starting at 17:0

Ryan is recounting a fight with a man and his wife in a movie theater. Disgusting

Cher and Tatum dancing

Tatum with Cary Grant

February 08, 2007

The battle between Ryan O’Neal and his son Griffin that led to the actor’s arrest at his Malibu home last weekend turned into a war of words in law offices Wednesday as their attorneys each charged that the other side was responsible for the fight in which a fireplace poker was swung and a gun fired.

Griffin O’Neal, 42, and his pregnant girlfriend, Joanna Berry, who had bandages around a bruised and swollen left eye, appeared but did not speak at a press conference by attorney Gloria Allred.

“We vigorously reject any assertion that the injuries suffered by Joanna and Griffin were as a result of Ryan O’Neal’s acting in self defense,” Allred said in a prepared statement.

The actor’s attorney, Mark Werksman, countered quickly.

“Ryan O’Neal is the victim and was attacked by his own son, with his own poker,” Werksman said. “It’s regrettable that Griffin is trying to make a public spectacle out of this family tragedy.”

Werksman said O’Neal’s other son, Redmond, was in the house at the time and the fight occurred over how Griffin has treated Redmond. Werksman said Redmond is currently in drug treatment.

Berry, who is expecting a baby boy at the end of March, suffered facial lacerations that took eight stitches to close, as well as head trauma and a corneal abrasion during the confrontation, Allred said.

Ryan O’Neal, who was arrested for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon and negligent discharge of a firearm, has said he fired a “warning shot” to scare his son away after he came at him with the poker. He said his son struck Berry, 25, with the poker when he ducked during the fight.

Sheriff’s officials said they hope to present the O’Neal case to the district attorney’s office by Friday. County prosecutors will review the findings to decide whether charges should be filed.

Allred said her clients would not speak to reporters because they may be called to testify if a criminal case is filed.

Asked if Griffin O’Neal was under the influence of drugs the night of the fight, Allred said he was not.

Werksman said he and his client believe Griffin O’Neal was drunk at the time and became violent when his father asked him to leave.

The O’Neals’ problems have a long history.

In 1983, police came to the O’Neal home after a fight in which the elder O’Neal knocked out two of Griffin’s teeth. No charges were filed.

Griffin O’Neal was found guilty of reckless boating in a 1986 accident that killed Gian-Carlo Coppola, son of film director Francis Ford Coppola, and got an 18-day jail sentence for not performing 400 hours of community service as ordered.

Tatum had a podcast 2 years ago, and was talking (again!) about the same dysfunctional family stories of her mother and father.

Enough already, It's annoying to have a pseudo career out of selling your crazy family stories. she wrote not one but two books about her life and had a reality show with her father. At this point What more will she say other than repeating the same old stories.

Pathetic

"What’s it like growing up famous, you ask? Join me and my daughter Emily, both of us the offspring of famous parents, as we compare notes on what it was like to grow up with everyone watching. My parents were actors Ryan O’Neal and Joanna Moore. I’m Emily’s mom, and her dad is tennis champion John McEnroe. This is where it all began!"

Mentally ill mother + Drug addict father = Tatum and Griffin

All of the Ryan - Tatum drama would be over if he just gave her what she wants - an apology. All he has to say is that he's sorry he wasn't a good father, he understands he made some bad choices, he caused her pain in her youth. It doesn't have to be 100% true, he doesn't have to even believe what he's saying, but he needs to say it. Shed a tear, hug. And it's OVER.

R533, bad movie choices and wasted time. Sue Mengers said she didn't understand the demise of his career, but consider that after Paper Moon, Ryan spent 2 years in Europe with Stanley Kubrick making Barry Lyndon. I loved Barry Lyndon (saw it at the newish Ziegfeld Theater on W54th) but the film was not successful and it didn't help Ryan's career. After that he appeared in drek like a sequel to Love Story and the embarrassing Streisand vehicle, The Main Event. I liked The Driver in 1978 and recommend it even if Ryan's miscast, he's sort of miscast on purpose. Too many other bad movies, not enough people caring to see him. I liked Irreconcilable Differences in 1984, hated the insufferable comedies Partners and So Fine, but Ryan's stardom had faded several years before and these films didn't revive it. He was still good looking (below).

R543 That photo from "The Driver" movie. I Love this film.

BTW, Ryan was still hot until 1986, I think being depressed by his dwindling dead career, he gave up and got fat.

Their reality show was a sham

No Reconciliation for Ryan and Tatum O'Neal - 2011

This summer, Ryan and Tatum O'Neal starred on a reality series for OWN that documented their attempts to work through years of estrangement and improve their relationship. It didn't work. "We only reconciled on the show," says Ryan. "Not in life."

Ryan & Tatum: The O'Neals followed the father-daughter duo through therapy sessions, Tatum's birthday party and a trip to the Palm Springs Film Festival for a screening of their 1973 film Paper Moon.

But now, "we don't speak," Ryan adds. "In fact, we're further apart now than we were when we started the show. So thanks, Oprah, for all your help." An OWN spokesperson had no comment.

Very cool poster too, R544. I have it.

I wonder if Ryan fucked the beautiful Isabelle Adjani ?! she was his costar in The driver movie

I liked Chances Are, but even that was 30 years ago.

Who should win the worst Hollywood father, Ryan O'neal, Marlon Brando or Joseph Jackson?!!

Take your pick

Hey don't forget about me!

It's hard for me to reconcile the book's description of Tatum's mother Joanna Moore with the actress I remember from the early Sixties. I mostly remember her as Andy's recurring girlfriend, Nurse Peggy, on the Andy Griffith Show. She seemed so sweet and sensible (and beautiful!), unlike the shrew Helen Crump! I also remember Moore did several Perry Mason episodes, and seemed like a fine actress. Her voice was like honey.

Now, O'Neal ALWAYS seemed like an asshole. Even from the first time I saw him on Leave It To Beaver. Very sexy, but always an asshole.

R551 Joanna Moore was mentally unstable even before meeting Ryan O'Neal, She did a movie with Elvis Presley and they had a brief affair during the film shooting.

In one of Elvis's biography book, Joanna Moore recounts how she once became so angry because Elvis was late , he was playing the piano calmly ignoring her, this made her so angry and slammed the piano's lid on Elvis's fingers. The next time she tried to meet him to apologize and brought with her first aid kit as a peace offering. Elvis didn't want to see her again and made his friends/Memphis Mafia make up some excuse to Joanna and she never saw him again.

Elvis's friends said that he realized something was wrong with Joanna and that as soon as Elvis saw any woman starting to act crazy, he cut her off immediately.

I can only imagine what these 2 explosive unstable personalities (Joanna and Ryan) did during their marriage!

Her looks were gone by the time she was married to Ryan.

Joanna looked like Ryan's mother in this photo.

Tatum seems to go from one difficult person to another: Ryan O'Neal to John McEnroe to Rosie O'Donnell.

[r555] that is a horrible camera angle

So, did ANYONE ever turn down Ryan's advances?

R557 Alright, Tatum!

R558 Evidently, Tatum.

Griffin O'Neal Talking about his mother:

“My mother was an alcoholic and she took weight-loss pills and other drugs,” says Griffin. “The combination of the two, along with her not being emotional stable because she was orphaned at age 6 and lived a rough life – was heart-wrenching.”

Each story is worse than the last

R558 Me!

Why did/does Tatum only blame her father for her lifelong problems, even though, her mother was totally crazy and fucked up, even more than Ryan!

R564 Maybe because after the age of 6 or so, she only sporadically saw her mother. Or maybe because her mother has been dead for years while Ryan is still alive and plaguing her.

Interesting comments from Ryan, circa 1970:

I was watching one of my favorite show, The Movie Game. Somehow Vietnam and the draft came up, and Ryan exclaimed with glee that President Kennedy passed a law than exempted men with children from being drafted. Little 14 year old me thought, you mean he had children to avoid the draft???

Did they have a sexual relationship?

Rose and Tatum seemed like a good power couple.

R568 They lasted 4 months! Was it some kind of publicity stunt for Tatum or what?! I've read an article in 2015, that Tatum was pushing Rosie to do a reality show together but Rosie was hesitant. Probably, Tatum needed a reality show to talk about her coming out late in her life!!!

As alluded to THE book will come out when Ryan dies. And I bet Griffin has a juicy one in in too. Rome at its most debauched and vile seems to have nothing on the Hollywood of the 70s 80s and 90s. The old Hollywood system even was chaste in comparison.

Her life doesn't seem very "incredible (as she puts it)" to me. Oh there was all the trappings of money and fame and movie stardom. But it was a sad, sordid life, filled with abuse of a kinds. And it was such an enviable, "incredible" life that she became a junkie. Happy people don't become junkies.

That picture at R537 is utterly grotesque. She's a CHILD and she's out at some adult club (the adults surrounding her look drunk) dancing with a nearly topless Cher (what in the hell was SHE thinking?). As for Cher...well, she had some kind of weird relationship with little Tatum. It wasn't exactly motherly; it was more like they were Hollywood buddies, which is strange since Cher was an adult and Tatum was still a little girl. And Tatum had admitted that she had some very, um, INTENSE feelings towards Cher that went beyond friendship. In other words, young Tatum had the hots for her buddy Cher. Gag! Oh well, what do you expect from a child who grew up in a sexualized environment. Some "incredible" life.

R569. They could have been very happy and adopted more children together. It could have been a beautiful love story. Maybe their time will come.

R571 That picture at [R537] is utterly grotesque. She's a CHILD and she's out at some adult club (the adults surrounding her look drunk) dancing with a nearly topless Cher (what in the hell was SHE thinking?)

Agree, that's what i was talking about in an earlier post that Tatum was Unsupervised all her life Not the myth Tatum likes to spread around that she was left unsupervised after Farrah's arrival in their life when Tatum was 16. That's BS.

New thread about Ryan O'Neal abusive/crazy behavior : Ryan O'Neal and Anjelica Huston Stories

Damn, this is headed toward a Part 2, isnt' it? Most attention any of these cunts have had in years. Can't remember if I mentioned this already, but bears repeating: great thread, OP!

Yes, just what Tatum needed, a relationship with another crazy Irish alkie like Rosie.

Cher was not practically topless- that's more material than most bathing suit tops.

As far as the clubbing, not excusing it but celeb kids were all over those places during that time period. Anderson Cooper's mother took him to Studio 54 multiple times.

This thread can serve as part 2 after this one ends.

Anjelica Huston : Ryan O'Neal is a deeply disturbed person

Is that what happened when you cheated on Jack with Ryan O’Neal?

No, Ryan swept me off my feet. He called and asked me if he could take me out and that was pretty much it.

He drove a Rolls-Royce back then.

A big maroon Rolls-Royce. You won’t see that car today. It was eye-watering, that car. Ryan was a great beauty. If I were to say to you that this red-gold burnished god walked in the door while I was at this party and went on one knee and said, “You’re the most fantastic, wonderful, amazing person I’ve ever had the privilege to be in a room with,” you’d have responded, believe me. Especially at a moment when your boyfriend told you he was going off to get the keys to the City of New York with Bob Evans and that none of the wives would be there. I was just in the mood, you know.

You wrote in your memoir that you kissed Ryan O’Neal on his dining-room table for six hours. I was trying to picture it, and I concluded that this couldn’t factually be true.

Factually true.

Ryan sounded like he was a psychopath with you.

Yes, I think he was. He head-butted me. He took my head in his hands and hit it with full force against his head because he couldn’t find me at a party. He’s a deeply disturbed — or at least was then; I can’t vouch for now, but I think he was — deeply disturbed person.

Him forcing her to keep her hair short like a boy is fucking weird. Given everything Ryan he did, he was obviously afraid he would want to fuck Tatum.

R580 I agree, Tatum said in many interviews, that as soon as she developed breasts, Ryan felt awkward and lost interest in fatherhood. (meaning he wasn't close to her as before).

As sick as it sounds, but I'm glad he prevented himself from sleeping with his daughter!!

R580 Yes!

From R74

"My father was still writing me angry letters, accusing me of disloyalty and demanding to see his grandchildren. When I didn't respond, he resorted to badgering me by phone, slurring his words as he claimed "I don't love you anymore" and insisted that he was a good father because he'd never "slept" with me."

I believe Ryan abused Diana Ross as well:

From Ryan O'Neal's book "Both of Us"

It seems drama follows Farrah and me almost everywhere we go during that summer of 1982 in New York. One afternoon we’re walking past the Russian Tea Room near Carnegie Hall, on Fifty-seventh Street, and a producer I know, Lester Persky, comes out of the restaurant, insisting that Farrah and I join him for tea. We agree to join him, and when we get to the table, the last person in the world I would want to see is sitting there: Diana Ross.

We had a brief fling years earlier and unfortunately things did not end smoothly. The moment Diana spots us she bursts into tears and runs into the ladies’ room. And she doesn’t come out. Farrah is sympathetic and I don’t have to explain. Farrah and I had had that conversation.

Long before I met Farrah, Diana Ross and I were signed to costar in The Bodyguard. John Boorman, who made Deliverance, was the director. Diana was difficult and opinionated. All she did was complain about the script. We went through three screenplays. It would have been one thing if none of the scripts were good, but they were excellent. I eventually got fed up with her imperiousness and we never did do the picture.

And yes, Diana and I did have a brief fling during preproduction for the film. But she killed whatever spark there was between us when she put on her diva act. I remember taking her to the airport one day. I had a Rolls-Royce at the time, and we ran out of gas. I made her help me push the car to a gas station. I thought that was funny, this big star pushing a Rolls-Royce down Century Boulevard, cars whizzing past us. She didn’t.

Tatum seems like she was a handful herself. A big Hollywood star at far too young an age and a very insecure big obnoxious brat. But at least she owns it today things that her father and McEnroe will never do. She seems like she keeps have drug related relapses and is still very insecure. She keeps seeking love from her father which is impossible. She knows this but as long as he's alive keeps hoping. Maybe she'll find some peace when he dies. But as long as she continues to blame Fawcett and having affairs with people like Rosie she'll be doomed.

Oh and I happen to think Kahn was robbed that year. Absolutely inexplicable. It's a beautiful performance.

"Who should win the worst Hollywood father, Ryan O'neal, Marlon Brando or Joseph Jackson?"

You forgot number one: BING CROSBY

"And Tatum had admitted that she had some very, um, INTENSE feelings towards Cher that went beyond friendship. In other words, young Tatum had the hots for her buddy Cher"

Some of that probably had to do with Tatum's then unrecognized lesbianism. Massive crushes on adults of the same sex, all of you must have experienced that, I don't blame Cher. (Cher looks anorexic, ewww).

Look, Tatum's job is BEING TATUM O'NEAL. Don't expect her to straighten herself out and write a self-help book. This is what she does and she's already gotten a radio program and a (short) reality show. They'll be more to come if she's lucky. And look at us - this thread is 585 responses, and It's one of many.

The pic of Tatum with Cher is from 1975, when Tatum was 11 or 12. She was photographed out partying a lot, but so were Brooke Shields, Drew Barrymore (in the 1980s), Kim Richards, Jodie Foster, etc. It wasn't considered all that weird, for whatever reason. It's shocking now but I was a little kid at the time and no one said a thing about it when you'd see photos like r537.

R578 Thanks, but I hope people will get that Part Two encompasses ALL of the O'Neal family messes. Not sure why Angelica Houston was included in the title.

R584 Well Said

Yes, Tatum was an obnoxious spoiled brat with some sociopathic traits (like setting fires ,cunning . lying and making up false stories). Sad to say but I think Ryan psychopathic treatment humbled her.

I don't think she will ever get over blaming Farrah (which is totally ridiculous and silly), even though her father was abusive and negligent since she was nominated for the Oscar, with No supervision in her or Griffin's life at all. But, in Tatum's mind, Before Farrah, She was Ryan's steady girlfriend, he had many women, but they came and went Except Farrah, who became a permanent serious relationship in her father's life, (which is normal BTW) . But to Tatum , it was the ultimate betrayal , because Ryan treated her like a girlfriend, not a daughter.

Deep down, Tatum knows it but she just keeps spreading the myth that she was young and needed her father's care! Tatum was 16/17 YO at the time, many girls by that age move out of their parents home and live independently (which Tatum was doing already since she was 11 years old).

If Tatum still wants a relationship with her dad, she should just accept him the way he is without excepting an apology and stop digging into the past.

Tatum is acting like a scorned woman who got dumped by her man and can't let go of her toxic abusive boyfriend. And Ryan said in their reality show, that they were divorced after Farrah, WTF?! .

[quote]Sad to say but I think Ryan psychopathic treatment humbled her.

That's actually a rather psychopathic thing to say, ironically. To claim that being abused physically, sexually and emotionally by a father who was a sociopath helped her by humbling her is absolutely frightening.

You really don't know that abused children act out in inappropriate ways BECAUSE of the abuse? You think they're just born "psychopaths" and need an even more psychopathic father to hit them, debase them, refuse to get them medical care after a bad car wreck, and put them in the same bed as he's fucking their friends?

You're a creep.

Tatum went from basically being feral to a movie star all by the age of 10. There was absolutely nothing stability or normalcy to any part of her childhood. I assume that's why this thread has so many posts. Very few if anyone can relate to the life she has lived, it's not even similar to most other child stars who usually have at least one parent omnipresent (for better or for worse) throughout their development. Tatum essentially had no parental figure until she was 7 years old and then her father was more like a buddy, partner, then ultimately her co-star. I can't say I blame her for making a career out of her life, since she's an actress in her mid-50s which is a demographic not noted for steady employment and she probably has cultivated no other skills seeing how she won an Oscar at 10 and was married with children by 21. What other options does she have, really?

I blame Ryan for everything. He had one "normal" child- the other 3 are messes. No matter what, he was the adult. Plus, it's not like he was an unsophisticated rube- he knew the Hollywood scene.

R591 I'm sorry but I really didn't mean any of that by my comment.

Why did Ryan treat Griffin more badly that Tatum?!!

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Melanie Griffith with Griffin O'Neal

R585 "she's already gotten a radio program"

You mean this Or other new thing?!

R595 Just a guess, but because she was incredibly successful for a few years, which reflected well on him (from a narcissist's point of view).

Yes, he resented her success, but he also treated her much better than he did Griffin, and I think that's one reason why.

R595 Just a guess, but because she was incredibly successful for a few years, which reflected well on him (from a narcissist's point of view).

Yes, he resented her success, but he also treated her much better than he did Griffin, and I think that's one reason why.