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NEW YORK - Hollywood actor Ryan O'Neal apparently has domestic problems even beyond what scriptwriters may have dreamed up for Peyton Place, the 1960s American soap opera that catapulted him to stardom.
For sure, they are at odds with the besotted romantic he played in his most famous film, Love Story.
The 65-year-old movie Oscar-winning veteran was making the worst kind of headlines after being arrested in his Malibu home over the weekend after a dispute with his son, Griffin O'Neal, 42, which allegedly ended with him brandishing a gun and firing a wayward shot.
"Deputies determined ... Griffin O'Neal ... had been assaulted by his father," a police spokesman confirmed.
The trouble started after O'Neil, actress Farah Fawcett and some friends returned to his home after a dinner to celebrate her birthday. There is no information on what triggered the confrontation with his son, but O'Neill was taken to a local police station and charged with assault with a deadly weapon and negligent discharge of a firearm. He was released on US$50,000 ($73,200) bail.
At least one bullet was allegedly fired during the altercation. The younger O'Neill, who over the years has had several clashes with the law himself, was not hurt but sources have said his pregnant girlfriend was "inadvertently" struck and taken to hospital and released after treatment.
O'Neal told the Los Angeles Times that Griffin, who had been visiting, grabbed a fireplace poker and started swinging it - grazing him four or five times.
He "aimed at my head, I ducked, he hit his own girlfriend in the head", O'Neal said.
"I got a little nervous at that point and fled to my room ... and I got my gun."
His son began to come up the stairs with the poker.
O'Neal said: "So I just fired it into the banister and that scared him and he fled."
O'Neal returned to the set of the TV show Bones yesterday despite his arm being sore and it was not known when he would be arraigned on the charges.
The dinner had been a double celebration for Fawcett, who on Thursday was given a clean bill of health by her doctors after a battle with breast cancer. The 1970s most famous pin-up girl of Charlie's Angel fame was Mr O'Neal's partner for 15 years, having previously been married to the Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors. O'Neal and Fawcett never married but they had one son together, Redmond.
O'Neal was previously married to Joanna Moore, with whom he had two children, Griffin and his sister, Tatum. While Tatum was successful as a child star, winning an Oscar nomination for starring beside her father in the 1973 film Paper Moon, she has had a negligible career since. She was married to American tennis star John McEnroe for several years and was rumoured to have drug problems of her own.
In comparison, Griffin's acting efforts never achieved lift off.
His problems with the law began in 1986 when he received an 18-day jail sentence for failing to serve 400 hours of community service after being found guilty of reckless boating following an accident that killed Gian-Carlo Coppola, the son of director Francis Ford Coppola.
In 1989, he pleaded guilty to a drunken driving charge and was given probation while, in 1992, pleaded no contest to charges that he had fired gunshots into the unoccupied car of an estranged girlfriend. He agreed to spend a year in drug rehabilitation and serve five years on probation.
- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS
