How Ryan O’Neal’s fiery temper, tempestuous love life and drug addiction led to years of family heartache – including the time he tried to hit on his OWN daughter and fired a gun at his son

It was Ryan O'Neal's charisma and good looks that convinced Paramount executives to hire him, against their instincts, for the role in Love Story. The film would become a decade-defining hit, earning O'Neal an Oscar nomination and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1970.

But it was his fiery temper, drug and alcohol addiction, tempestuous love life and his headline-grabbing family that kept him in the public eye.

O'Neal, who died Friday at the age of 82, was as famous for his personal life as his films — romances with Barbra Streisand, Joan Collins, Diana Ross, Bianca Jagger, Angelica Houston, Ursula Andress, and especially his relationship with Farrah Fawcett.

The father of four admitted he once tried to hit his daughter Tatum without realizing who she was.

He was arrested after firing a gun at his son Griffin, who had his own long history of arrests, and was charged with negligence following a boating accident that killed Francis Ford Coppola's son Gian-Carlo.

None of Ryan O'Neal's relationships captured the public imagination as much as his rollercoaster romance with blonde bombshell Farrah Fawcett; pictured 1989

O'Neal was arrested again after police found him and his youngest son Redmond using methamphetamine at the actor's Malibu home in 2008. Redmond also has a complicated and sad story and is currently at Patton State Psychiatric Hospital in San Bernardino.

His son Patrick is the only one of the three to emerge unscathed: Patrick is an actor and sportscaster, and was the one who announced his father's death.

O'Neal's last major role was with his daughter in a 2011 reality show, “Ryan and Tatum: The O'Neals,” on Oprah Winfrey's cable channel OWN. She starred alongside her father in Paper Moon and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at the age of ten, making her the youngest person ever to win an Academy Award.

But the couple had become estranged, with Tatum accusing her father of physical and emotional abuse and breaking off contact for 25 years.

The Oprah series gave the impression that the two had ended their long estrangement; he later said this was not true.

“We're further apart now than when we started the show,” he said.

EARLY YEARS

O'Neal was born in Los Angeles, his father a screenwriter and his mother an actress.

At the age of 17, he joined his globetrotting parents in Germany and landed his first role: a stuntman in the television series Tales of the Vikings.

He returned to LA and ended up in jail for the first time at the age of 18: 51 days, after a fight at a New Year's Eve party.

O'Neal became a TV actor and tried to break into Hollywood at a time when executives looked down on television.

He played rich town man Rodney Harrington on the primetime soap opera Peyton Place for five years before Ali MacGraw – who had won Best Newcomer at the Golden Globes the year before – lobbied for his casting alongside her in a new film . .

“Jon Voight turned down the role. Beau Bridges would do it,” he told a reporter in 1971. “When my name came up through Ali, they all said 'No.'

'Ali said, 'Please meet him.'

That film, Love Story, launched their career stratospheric.

At the age of 29, he became a household name and was honored with the only Oscar nomination of his career. He lost to George C. Scott and won with the war epic Patton.

But O'Neal's film, starring MacGraw, had the highest grossing of the year.

And throughout the 1970s, O'Neal would remain one of the biggest movie stars of the decade; his relationship with Farah Fawcett enhanced his status.

TATUM AND GRIFFIN ARRIVE: O'NEAL'S FIRST MARRIAGE

O'Neal's first marriage was to Joanna Moore, which lasted from 1963 to 1967 and eventually ended due to his infidelity and her alcoholism. She was a great beauty and had an affair with Elvis Presley during the recording of 1962's Follow Your Dream.

O'Neal was her third husband, and they had two children: Tatum and Griffin. But her drug and alcohol addiction was a constant theme and left scars on both their children. Tatum would describe the chaos in her autobiography, in which she wrote about missed meals, syringes all over the house and her mother bringing along a 15-year-old boyfriend.

O'Neal would later say, “I got married at 21, and I wasn't a real grown-up 21-year-old.”

'My first child was born when I was 22.

'I was a man; I didn't discover women until I was married, and then it was too late.'

PATRICK IS BORN: O'NEAL'S SECOND MARRIAGE

O'Neal left Moore in 1967 and married Leigh-Taylor Young, his co-star in Peyton Place, that same year.

Their wedding was spontaneous: While they were in Hawaii for a promotional event for the show, an ABC executive offered them the chance to get married at his home.

They had a son, Patrick. The couple divorced in 1971.