Ryan O’Neal appeared on Tuesday’s “Today Show” to talk about his volatile, three-decade relationship with the late Farrah Fawcett and his shortcomings as a parent.
The actor recently revealed that he has prostate cancer, although he told Matt Lauer he has not yet started treatment.
O’Neal says he wrote a new memoir about his life with Fawcett because he missed her after her 2009 death, and the book was a way to “keep the line between us going.”
He appeared to be somewhat uncomfortable with Lauer’s questions about revelations O’Neal himself makes in the book regarding Fawcett’s mood swings, addictions, and insecurities as she aged.
O’Neal doesn’t think he and Fawcett were “bad for each other,” but admits that he was “hard to live with” and that their turbulent relationship had moments of violence and despair.
One particular story — about son Redmond, then 6, grabbing a knife and threatening to stab himself to get O’Neal and Fawcett to stop fighting — is particularly brutal.
When Lauer asks whether his children’s histories of run-ins with the law and substance abuse indicates that he was a “bad parent,” O’Neal solemnly replies, “Looks like it, doesn’t it? Sure looks like it. I suppose I was.”
(Source: NBC and GossipCop.com)
