Tatum O’Neal “doesn’t want to take drugs” ever again and realls her dad offering them to her on his deathbed.
Tatum O’Neal “doesn’t want to take drugs” ever again.
The 61-year-old actress – who has Kevin, 38, Sean, 37, and 33-year-old Emily with ex-husband John McEnroe- struggled with addiction in the years that followed her child stardom and ended up in a coma in 2020 after abusing prescription medications but has now declared that she wants to stay clean for the rest of her life.
She told Variety: “Pills and painkillers, cocaine.
“And of course, girls, girls, girls.
“I love [my kids] so much but I’d already given so much. Part of me just didn’t want to make it, you know?
“Now, I don’t want to hurt myself. Now I don’t want to f****** take drugs again — I really don’t. I’m in the happiest place I’ve ever been.”.
The actress became the youngest person ever to win a competitive Academy Award at the age of 10 for her performance in ‘Paper Moon’ alongside her father Ryan O’Neal but recalled that the last time she saw her dad – who died December 2023 at the age of 82 – he tried to offer her pills from his deathbed.
She said: “I know he was drinking, smoking a lot of pot, and he was like, ‘Here, take a pill.’ I was like, ‘No, thank you.'”
Despite this, John told the outlet that Tatum did indulge in alcohol that day.
He said: “She drank that day though. Every single time she’s seen her dad my entire life, something happens.”
Tatum learned upon her father’s death that she had been cut out of his will, and believes that this could have been down to her “honest” memoir.
She said: “The first book that I wrote was just a f****** honest book. And that’s what got him.
“Keep it, m***********”.
Tatum O’Neal ‘doesn’t want to take drugs’ ever again
