Ryan O’Neal has died at the age of 82. The actor’s loss comes two years after he considered his role in the Oscar-nominated film Love story with costar Ali MacGraw for the film’s 50th anniversary. At the time, O’Neal and MacGraw spoke to PEOPLE about their favorite scenes — and their “magical” on-screen chemistry. Here is that interview from 2021.
“We had absolutely nothing in common,” Ali MacGraw recalled of her first meeting with Love story actor Ryan O’Neal.
“He was a kid from California, he was a movie star, he was athletically built.”
She was an art grad from Wellesley who worked in fashion magazines. But their chemistry was “magical,” O’Neal, then 79, recalled. “They had to drag me away from her,” he joked.
Said MacGraw, 81: “We just clicked.”
“We just kissed for happiness,” O’Neal said of their close relationship.
The film, which premiered in February 1971 and has been re-released on Blu-ray to mark its 50th anniversary, features O’Neal as Harvard prep schooler Oliver Barrett IV, who falls in love with bright, working-class Radcliffe student Jennifer Cavilleri (MacGraw).
“There was a moment where I had snow all over my face and Ali leaned over and licked it, like a snake,” O’Neal said of their playful snow scene. “It was beautiful, and it’s in the movie.”
Ryan O’Neal’s life in photos
Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw in ‘Love Story’. Paramount Pictures/Courtesy of Getty
It was a phenomenon, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of all time and turning its stars into overnight supernovas. It all started when MacGraw, who had just made a splash in her debut film, Goodbye, Columbus, read the script and told Paramount boss (and future husband) Robert Evans that she wanted the part. “When I read that, I cried,” she remarked.
O’Neal was chosen after the studio tested 14 others, including Jon Voight and Christopher Walken.
As Evans later noted, “None of them could compare.”
None of the stars had any idea that the film would be such a hit until the premiere.
“The whole audience was crying at the end,” recalled MacGraw, whose character dies of a never-specified illness.
“When I was putting on makeup, they looked at me and said, ‘Come in now,'” said MacGraw, who went bare-faced in the scene where she lay dying.
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‘Love Story’ actors Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw in 2002.
J. Vespa/WireImage
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O’Neal walked past the theater where it was showing. “The line went around the block,” he recalled.
“When we asked, ‘Is this for this show?’ they said, ‘No, that’s for the next one.’ ”
“I think the biggest achievement in my life is that I survived [being] flavor of the month,” said MacGraw and became an overnight sensation.
One thing that still baffles both stars is how the film’s last line, “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry,” took on a life of its own. “I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it, because I’ve had to say ‘sorry’ a lot in my life,” said O’Neal, who was married twice before his long, stormy relationship with the late Farrah Fawcett.
MacGraw, who married and divorced actor Steve McQueen in the 1970s after leaving Evans, was also amazed at how much the film remains loved: “It’s amazing that it still touches people.”
“How could anyone possibly imagine what would happen with this movie?” she remembered.
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Source: HIS Education