The names Ryan O'Neal and his daughter Tatum O'Neal are iconic for a lot of people. After all, this is the father-daughter duo who charmed the world with 1973's Paper Moon, in which the two join forces as Moses Pray and Addie Loggins, two con artists who are thrown together when Moses is given the responsibility of making sure 9-year-old Addie is delivered safely to her family. Tatum is the youngest person to have ever won an Oscar, having been awarded the prize for supporting actress for her role in the film.
While many believed the pair led a gilded Hollywood life, in the years that have followed both have been clear that it was anything but. Tatum has opened up about her experiences with sexual assault as a child, noting that while her mother, Joanna Moore, and her father were each wrestling with addiction, she was often left with men they thought "were safe."
"When your parents are off getting drunk or high, they are not watching what happens to their children. I suffered years of abuse, both emotional and sexual."
Tatum and her brother went to live with their famous father when she was 8, but the environment was notoriously volatile. Her father left the two largely to fend for themselves after he moved in with Farrah Fawcett in the early 1980s, and Tatum struggled with her own bouts with addiction. She met and married tennis pro John McEnroe in 1986, and the former couple has three children: Kevin, Sean, and Emily.
Addiction rattled the lives of Tatum's own children, and she lost custody of her kids following her 1992 separation from John. However, this was the trigger she needed, and Tatum fought her way back to motherhood and light. She was eventually granted custody of her kids, and she has been clean since.
Throughout her own struggles, Tatum was mostly estranged from her father.
Ryan O'Neal continued to battle his own demons for decades. His relationship with Farrah spanned 30 years, and the pair wrestled with addiction throughout most of it. After enjoying tremendous success following Love Story (Ryan) and Charlie's Angels (Farrah), both struggled to work as reports of the details of their life together were revealed.
At the same time, Tatum and her siblings were subjected to genuinely horrendous treatment by people in their lives who were theoretically supposed to care about them. Tatum once explained that she hoped her father would step in: "I did a lot of running away. I was just waiting for my dad to save me — please save me, please, you know, because I was getting hurt. I was getting in trouble; I wasn't going to school. My teeth were rotting. Like, that was really happening, you know, and I was suffering."
She's also shared that whatever it looked like, the time the pair spent filming Paper Moon together wasn't particularly easy: "In the long scenes, I wanted to make sure my dad wasn't mad at me, and sometimes he was. Because I'd miss a take for 30 takes or something, you know, and we had to turn around. I mean, I was difficult at times to work with, I'm sure. You know, I was eight years old."
Tatum and Ryan's relationship really hit the rocks when she was a teenager and he became immersed in the life he was living with Farrah. Tatum has posited that her father simply "had no idea" how to have a relationship with his teenage daughter, so he just stopped trying completely.
Tatum and Ryan have tried to reconcile over the years, but the process has been understandably difficult. There's a lot to sort through for each of them; a lot of things to atone for and plenty to apologize for. Ryan hasn't always been especially nice about any of his children in the press, and in 2009 he told Vanity Fair, "I was in touch with them for years, and I was a mess. I'm not in touch with them now, and I've never been happier. A couple of them I would take back."
Ryan was reportedly especially angry about Tatum's 2004 book, A Paper Life.
Farrah Fawcett died in 2009, and her death spurred Ryan and Tatum to try to repair their fractured relationship yet again. They even had their own reality show on Oprah's network OWN called Ryan and Tatum: The O'Neals. Unfortunately, their attempt at reconciliation didn't work, and outlets reported that the show was largely manufactured.
In the years that have followed, Tatum and Ryan have made moves toward reconciling again. So when Sean McEnroe shared a photo of his family, including his mom, with Ryan earlier this week, everyone was really, really excited.
Sean wrote:
"This is one of the most memorable photos of my life. The last time we were all together was at the 30-year Paper Moon Anniversary in 2003."
He added, "I could cry tears of gratitude that everyone in this photo is still alive and that we were all able to come together again after so many years of hardship. The entire West Coast is burning, but if the O'Neals can reconcile, truly anything is possible."
Hopefully, the two can continue to repair their relationship, if it's what ends up being the healthiest choice for both of them. As Tatum explained in 2010, this is the family she has: "He told me he's sorry. He's all I have in terms of family, and I needed him in my life. My dad was absolutely everything to me."
