Tatum O'Neal has spoken out following the passing of Ryan O'Neal on Friday.
The Oscar-winning actress spoke with People magazine about her feelings following her father's death. Since working together in 1973's Paper Moon, for which Tatum won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress when she was only ten years old, the two have had a tumultuous relationship.
“I feel great sorrow with my father’s passing,” Tatum told the publication. “He meant the world to me. I loved him very much and know he loved me too. I’ll miss him forever, and I feel very lucky that we ended on such good terms.”
Patrick Ryan, Ryan's son, announced his father's death in a series of lengthy Instagram posts, calling the Peyton's Place star a "Hollywood legend."
“My father Ryan O’Neal has always been my hero. I looked up to him and he was always bigger than life,” the caption of his first post read.
“My dad became an international movie star with Love Story at the beginning of the 1970’s, a decade he absolutely crushed by starring in movies like What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon, Barry Lyndon, A Bridge Too Far, The Main Event, and The Driver.”
Tatum and Ryan's relationship went through ups and downs in the decades since they worked together. Tatum suffered from substance misuse, and Ryan acknowledged he wasn't sure he was cut out to be her parent.
“I had this peculiar thing on Paper Moon, and that is the director insisted she wasn’t my daughter,” he said in 2011’s OWN reality series Ryan and Tatum: The O’Neals. “The director insisted that my character, Moses, never thought for a second that this was his daughter. So, he wanted me to make sure that I didn’t think of her as my daughter. And maybe it never wore off.”