(CelebrityAccess) — Ryan O’Neal, the Oscar-nominated actor of the stage and screen, best known for his roles on Peyton Place and the 1970 film Love Story, died on Friday. He was 82.
His passing was announced by his son Patrick O’Neal in a post on Instagram. The post did not provide any additional information on a cause of death.
A native of Los Angeles, O’Neal trained as an amateur boxer before beginning a career in acting in 1960, appearing in small roles on multiple television shows before he was cast as Rodney Harrington on the ABC night-time soap opera Peyton Place.
O’Neal remained on the cast of Peyton Place for much of the show’s run, appearing in 422 episodes until the original series came to an end in 1969.
In 1970, he was cast as Oliver Barrett in the Academy Award-winning 1970 film “Love Story,” which earned him an Oscar nod for Best Actor.
His other big screen roles include Paper Moon (1973), the Stanley Kubrick-directed Barry Lyndon (1975), Oliver’s Story (1978), and A Bridge Too Far (1977).
O’Neal married his first wife, actress Joanna Moore, in 1966 but the couple split in 1966. His second marriage was to actress Leigh Taylor-Young, with whom he had a son, but the couple divorced amicably in 1974.
He later had a long-term relationship with actor Farrah Fawcett.
Despite his early success, O’Neal struggled with drug addiction and health issues in his later career. In 1986, he was charged with manslaughter in connection with the boating death of Gian-Carlo Coppola, son of the famous director Francis Ford Coppola, but he later pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of negligent operation of a boat. In 2008, he was arrested on drug charges along with his son, Redmond O’Neal.
In 2001, O’Neal was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia, which eventually went into remission, and in 2012, he revealed that he was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
