Family background

O'Neal was born in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, California, to actors Ryan O'Neal (1941-) and Joanna Moore (1934-1997). Her brother, Griffin, was born in 1964. In 1967, her parents divorced and her father quickly remarried. Her father's marriage to actress Leigh Taylor-Young produced Tatum's half-brother, Patrick, but the union ended in divorce in 1973. Tatum has another half-brother, Redmond, from Ryan O'Neal's relationship with actress Farrah Fawcett. O'Neal's mother died of lung cancer in 1997 at age 63, after a career in which she appeared in such movies as Walk on the Wild Side and Follow That Dream.

Career

On April 2, 1974, at age 10, Tatum O'Neal won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress for her performance in Paper Moon, released in May 1973. The youngest ever to win a competitive Academy Award, she turned 9 years old during filming in autumn 1972. O'Neal played the role of Addie Loggins, a child con artist being tutored by a Depression-era grifter played by her father, Ryan.

O'Neal also starred in films such as The Bad News Bears (1976) with Walter Matthau, International Velvet (1978) with Christopher Plummer and Anthony Hopkins, and Little Darlings (1980) with Kristy McNichol, and co-starred in Nickelodeon (1976) with her father Ryan, and in Circle of Two (1980) with Richard Burton. She appeared as the title character in the Faerie Tale Theatre episode "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (1984).

Adult career

She appeared in only five films during the next 15 years, including in Basquiat (1996) as Cynthia Kruger.

In the early 2000s, O'Neal began acting again and made guest appearances on Sex and the City, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. In 2005, O'Neal began a recurring role as Maggie Gavin on the firehouse drama series Rescue Me, portraying the unbalanced and lively sister of Tommy Gavin, played by Denis Leary.

In January 2006, she participated in the second season of ABC's reality series Dancing with the Stars with professional partner Nick Kosovich. They were eliminated in the second round. She went on to do commentary for the series on Entertainment Tonight.

From 2006 to 2007, she portrayed the vindictive and psychotic Blythe Hunter in the My Network TV drama Wicked Wicked Games. She appears opposite Nashawn Kearse and Vanessa L. Williams in the film My Brother (2007).

Personal life

Family and relationships

One of O'Neal's first public boyfriends 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, but he was terrified by the idea of sex. O'Neal adamantly denied all of Jackson's claims in her 2004 autobiography.

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. They married In 1986. The couple has three children: Kevin, Sean, and Emily. They separated in 1992 and were divorced in 1994. Following the divorce, O'Neal's drug problems reemerged and she developed an addiction to heroin. As a result of her drug problems, McEnroe obtained custody of the children in 1998.

In 2011, Tatum and her father Ryan began to restore their broken father-daughter relationship after 25 years. Their reunion and reconciliation process was captured in the short-lived Oprah Winfrey Network series Ryan and Tatum: The O'Neals. In 2015, she said she had begun dating women, while choosing not to identify as either lesbian or heterosexual, saying, "I'm not one or the other."

Arrest

On June 1, 2008, she was arrested for buying crack cocaine near her Manhattan apartment building. When police searched her, they found two bags of drugs—one of crack cocaine, one of powder cocaine—and an unused crack pipe. She was charged with a misdemeanor criminal possession of a controlled substance. Authorities released her without bail. On July 2, 2008, O'Neal pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in connection with the arrest and agreed to spend two half-day sessions in a drug treatment program.

Autobiographical claims

In her 2005 autobiography, A Paper Life, O'Neal alleged that she was molested by her father's drug dealer when she was 12. She also alleges physical and emotional abuse from her father, much of which she attributed to drug use. She also detailed her own heroin addiction and its effects on her relationship with her children. Her father, Ryan, denied the allegations. In a prepared statement, Ryan O'Neal said: "It is a sad day when malicious lies are told in order to become a 'best-seller'."

In 2011, O'Neal wrote a new collection of memoirs titled Found: A Daughter's Journey Home, which dealt with her tempestuous relationship with her father, volatile marriage to John McEnroe, and her recent drug arrest.

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1973	Paper Moon	Addie Loggins	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actress Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1976	The Bad News Bears	Amanda Whurlitzer
	Nickelodeon	Alice Forsyte
1978	International Velvet	Sarah Brown
1980	Circle of Two	Sarah Norton
	Little Darlings	Ferris Whitney
1981	Prisoners	Christie	Unreleased
1985	Certain Fury	Scarlet
1992	Little Noises	Stella
1996	Basquiat	Cynthia Kruger
2002	The Scoundrel's Wife	Camille Picou	US video title: The Home Front San Diego Film Festival Award for Best Actress
2003	The Technical Writer	Slim
2006	My Brother	Erica
2008	Saving Grace B. Jones	Grace B. Jones
	Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal	Lorene Tippit
2010	The Runaways	Marie Harmon
	Last Will	Hayden Emery
	Sweet Lorraine	Lorraine Bebee	completed
	Mr. Sophistication	Kim Waters	filming completed
2015	She's Funny That Way	Waitress	Cameo

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1984	Faerie Tale Theatre	Goldilocks	"Goldilocks and the Three Bears"
1989	CBS Schoolbreak Special	Kim	"15 and Getting Straight"
1993	Woman on the Run: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story	Lawrencia Bembenek
2003	Sex and the City	Kyra	"A Woman's Right to Shoes"
2004	8 Simple Rules	Ms. McKenna	"Opposites Attract: Part 3: Night of the Locust"
	Law & Order: Criminal Intent	Kelly Garnett	"Semi-Detached"
2005	Ultimate Film Fanatic	Judge
2005-2011	Rescue Me	Maggie
2006	Dancing with the Stars	Herself	5 episodes
	Wicked Wicked Games	Blythe Hunter	51 episodes
2011	Ryan and Tatum: The O'Neals	Herself
2015	Hell's Kitchen	Herself	Episode 14

Bibliography

• Tatum O'Neal autobiography: A Paper Life. ISBN 0-06-054097-4.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]