Tatum O'Neal's 3 Words After Being Left Out of Dad Ryan O'Neal's Will
Originally appeared on E! Online
Ultimately, there was no love lost between Tatum O'Neal and her late dad Ryan O'Neal.
And more than one year after the Love Story actor, with whom she’d had a difficult relationship spanning decades, died, Tatum shared that she had been left out of his will. As for her reaction, she had just three words, telling Variety in an interview published Feb. 26, "Keep it, motherf--ker."
Ryan died in December 2023 at age 82 from congestive heart failure. He was survived by four children—Patrick O'Neal, 57, who he shared with ex-wife Leigh Taylor-Young, Redmond O'Neal, his 40-year-old son with late actress Farrah Fawcett, and Tatum and her brother Griffin O'Neal, 60, his kids with late ex-wife Joanna Moore.
At the time, Tatum paid tribute to her dad, saying in an Instagram video, "He is in Heaven now."
Over the years, the 61-year-old had been open about her difficult upbringing, accusing her mother of childhood neglect and her dad of physical, verbal and emotional abuse in her memoirs. They were published before her mom's 1997 death, and Joanna never addressed her allegations publicly. Ryan denied ones their daughter had made about him.
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And specifically, when it came to her dad, it was their costarring role in Paper Moon, which saw the then-10-year-old become the youngest person to take home an Oscar that drove them apart, telling NBC News in 2004 that the film "sort of destroyed" their relationship.
That same year, in her book A Paper Life, Tatum wrote that people have told her that when she received her Oscar nomination for their movie, her dad "slugged" her. She told NBC News, "I have no memory of it at all."
Ryan refuted the allegations made by his only daughter.
"It is a sad day when malicious lies are told in order to become a 'best seller,'" he said in 2004, per Dateline. "As a father, it is my hope that this book was written to serve as her therapy, and if this is what she needed to do to wake each day and live with herself, then I can only support her healing process, good, bad and ugly."
Referring to Tatum’s struggles with addictions over the years, he continued, "It is now my hope, that she remain sober, so that her perception of the future is nothing like her clouded memories of the past."
While the duo were estranged for more than two decades before they attempted to repair their relationship with the help of reality TV. Ryan and Tatum: The O'Neals aired for one season of Oprah Winfrey's OWN cable channel. However, the two ultimately remained distant after filming.
Still, they made moves to repair their relationship. Tatum, who suffered a severe stroke in 2020, caused by an overdose of prescription pills, told Variety she saw Ryan three times after her health crisis, including right before his death.
But since Ryan’s death she has also been looking forward. As her son Kevin McEnroe, 38, the eldest of her three children with ex-husband John McEnroe, explained to the outlet he believes that his mom has started “letting go of how much space he took up in her life."
"Something really shifted when he died that allowed her to be —" he said, before the actress interrupted, "Yes, just Tatum! Without my dad."
Kevin added, "Just Tatum is enough."
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