Goodbye Ryan O’Neal, We Will Never Forget What You Taught Us

Do matinee idols really die? Or do they simply fade away merging with the universe so we can’t see them?

Ryan O’Neal was the archetypal matinee idol: a spoilt rich brat who became a star because he had the luck, cockiness and arrogance. Although he did many films subsequently, it was his star-making vehicle Love Story that remains embedded in our minds as the Ryan signature-tune . Admittedly, Ryan didn’t have to act the millionaire father pampered son’s part. He WAS born glamorous and privileged, so deal with it! Hard to do, for sure; considering the number of failed relationships, brawls, drug busts and unruly children Ryan was responsible for.

His life reads like the manual on How To Be A Hedonistic Film Star.

Love Story remains that one work which defines Ryan O’ Neal. He was super-cool but no great shakes as an actor, scarcely better than our own Anil Dhawan or Siddharth Malhotra. But with oodles of inborn charm which made him very popular among the ladies, and lots of men too.

It came as a shock to know that the best screen lovebirds before and after Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia in Bobby could barely stand one another. Ryan O Neal and Ali MacGraw who played Oliver and Jenny to immortal fame, were hardly friends during or after the making of this film. That’s the way some of the greatest love stories were made: Kamal Haasan and Rati Agnihotri hated each other during the making of Ek Duuje Ke Liye and Dilip Kumar-Madhubala had stopped talking to one another while shooting for Mughal-e-Azam.

My one big takeaway from Love Story was Ryan’s line: “Love means never having to say you are sorry.” It took me a very long time to understand what it really meant. When you are in love you don’t need to SAY you are sorry. Feeling it is enough.

Did Ryan O’Neal ever feel sorry for the faux life he lived? For feeling insecure when his 10-year daughter Tatum won an Oscar for Paper Moon in which he played his own daughter’s father? ( Mehmood and his real-life daughter copied and pasted Paper Moon into Ginny Aur Johnny). For doing that blustering unwieldy costume drama, Barry Lyndon with director Stanley Kubrick just proved what we already know: matinee idols don’t need to act. They just need to be good-looking and charming. This, Ryan, was, if nothing else.