59-year-old actress Tatum O’Neal is the youngest person to ever win an Oscar. At the age of 10, her performance in 1973’s Paper Moon was chosen as the best in the Supporting Actress category, which also included The Exorcist‘s Linda Blair. O’Neal’s co-star was her own father Ryan O’Neal.
The actress went on to become one of the most famous and successful child actresses in Hollywood at the time, starring in films like The Bad News Bears, Little Darlings, and Nickelodeon. During the rest of her career, O’Neal’s acting output slowed down as she grappled with personal issues, including substance abuse and a strained relationship with her father, both of which she has since detailed in her two memoirs, 2004’s A Paper Life and 2011’s Found: A Daughter’s Journey Home.
She made appearances in RuPaul’s Drag Race, Hell’s Kitchen, and Dancing with the Stars, and starred in a number of B movies in recent years. In 2011, O’Neal and her father signed on to document their efforts to mend their broken relationship in a docu-series for the Oprah Winfrey Network.
What happened to Tatum O’Neal?
In a 2023 interview with People, the Paper Moon and Basquiat actress revealed she overdosed on pain medication including opioids and morphine in May of 2020. As a result, she suffered a stroke which left her in a coma for six weeks. Her son Kevin McEnroe told the magazine there were moments of doubt about whether O’Neal would make it. When she woke up she was diagnosed with aphasia — the result of an injury in the part of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension — leaving her unable to speak, read, and write.
Throughout her life, O’Neal has battled with sobriety. The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the chronic back and neck pain she had been experiencing led her to an extreme. In the past three years, the actress has been committed to her recovery, both physical and mental. O’Neal said she sometimes attends four meetings a day and is working on recovering her ability to communicate with others. She can speak but still has a hard time reading and writing.