Tatum O’Neal reacts to being left out of father Ryan O’Neal’s will

The will of film star Ryan O’Neal, who died in December 2023, didn’t include his daughter Tatum O’Neal, who famously costarred with him in 1973’s Paper Moon. She revealed her pithy response — “Keep it, motherf—er” — in an interview with Variety published Wednesday.

The O’Neals had an infamously rocky relationship. In her 2004 memoir, A Paper Life, she wrote about her nontraditional home life with him, which included him doing drugs in front of her, regularly parading women through the house, and wielding a serious temper that often led to violence. It’s unfortunate, she said, because she could use the money for medical expenses, including costs incurred after a stroke she had after an overdose in 2020, and to make up for the $1 million stolen by an accountant.

“The first book that I wrote was just a f—ing honest book,” O’Neal told the publication. “And that’s what got him.”

She recalled, for instance, that he “socked” her when she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in their Peter Bogdanovich-directed dramedy about a con man who finds himself teaming up with a young girl. (The elder O’Neal wasn’t nominated at all, but his 10-year-old daughter won, becoming the youngest Oscar winner ever.) The former child star also wrote that she’d been sexually abused by someone in her father’s inner circle and, though banned for a time, was allowed back in.

“Things got ugly quick” after their movie, said O’Neal, whose credits also include 1976’s The Bad News Bears, Little Darlings in 1980, The Runaways in 2010. She also portrayed a so-called friend of Carrie Bradshaw’s on a 2003 episode of Sex and the City, in which she demands that her party guests take off their shoes when they arrive for a party. When Carrie goes to put her Manolo Blahniks back on, they’ve disappeared.

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After O’Neal’s father turned against her, he had also made her question herself, she said in the new interview.

“He was controlling, and telling me, ‘No, you’re not good,'” she said. “And so then I started to get not good, feeling scared all the time.”

Like her father, O’Neal struggled with addiction, which didn’t make their relationship any easier, and they were estranged for 20 years. She’s said they reconnected after Ryan O’Neal’s partner, the late Farrah Fawcett, died of cancer in 2009. They had three visits in the final decade or so of his life. On the last one, she noted, he offered her drugs.

“I know he was drinking, smoking a lot of pot, and he was like, ‘Here, take a pill,'” O’Neal said. “I was like, ‘No, thank you.'”

Despite the bad blood at times, she made a loving statement about him when he died.

“I feel great sorrow with my father’s passing,” she told PEOPLE. “He meant the world to me. I loved him very much and know he loved me too. I’ll miss him forever, and I feel very lucky that we ended on such good terms.”