ENTERTAINMENT: ‘LOVE STORY’ STAR RYAN O'NEAL DIES AT 82

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Agency Report

Actor and hottie Ryan O’Neal, who starred in “Love Story” and was nominated for an Oscar and also starred in “Paper Moon” and “Barry Lyndon,” passed away on Friday, according to his son. He was eighty-two.

“I’ve never had to say something as difficult as this, but it’s here now. Patrick O’Neal posted on Instagram, “My dad passed away peacefully today, with his loving team by his side, supporting him and loving him as he would us.”

In addition to being the ideal leading man due to his smouldering features and flawless jawline, actor O’Neal was also well-known for his turbulent, multi-decade relationship with actress Farrah Fawcett.

O’Neal’s big break came in 1970’s “Love Story,” a box office sensation that garnered him an Oscar nomination (one of many grabs for a movie that is now acknowledged as serving as a model for the “chick flick” genre) after years of television work in the 1960s.

He costarred with Barbra Streisand in the screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” two years later, which became another US audience hit and raised his image even more.

In the years that followed, O’Neal acted as a jewel thief in “The Thief Who Came To Dinner” and co-starred in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1973 smash film “Paper Moon” with his daughter Tatum O’Neal, earning a nomination for a Golden Globe.

In 1975 he appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon,” a picaresque historical drama that is better thought-of now than it was five decades ago.

“As a human being, my father was as generous as they come,” Patrick O’Neal wrote.

“And the funniest person in any room. And the most handsome clearly, but also the most charming. Lethal combo.

“He loved to make people laugh. It’s pretty much his goal. Didn’t matter the situation, if there was a joke to be found, he nailed it. He really wanted us laughing. And we did all laugh. Every time. We had fun. Fun in the sun.”

O’Neal was married and divorced twice before he began a stormy, but enduring, relationship with “Charlie’s Angels” star Fawcett.

After she allegedly saw him indiscreet with another actress in 1997, the couple, who had been together for nearly 20 years starting in the late 1970s, ended their relationship.

They got back together in 2001, and she died in 2009 at the age of sixty-two.

O’Neal admitted to being sad while watching “Love Story,” which is about an affluent child who falls in love with a working-class girl who eventually dies, to British journalist Piers Morgan.

“I lost Farrah to cancer, and I just wonder (why) that played out that way for me,” he said.

“One was just a big deal and so successful, and then in real life it was just the opposite, a tragedy.”

AFP