“I was an addict my whole life,” the actress says.
The woman famous for being the youngest Academy Award winner in history is opening up about a shocking health scare that almost took her life — and how she’s moving forward now.
In a new interview for the cover of People, 59-year-old actress Tatum O’Neal reveals that in 2020, a drug overdose caused her to suffer a massive stroke, which then left her in a coma for six weeks. “I almost died,” she recalled.
O’Neal’s 37-year-old son, Kevin McEnroe (whom she shares with tennis legend John McEnroe), told the magazine that after his mother went into cardiac arrest and experienced several seizures, he and his siblings weren’t sure she would live — and if she did, whether she’d be able to walk or speak again.
“It was the phone call we’d always been waiting for,” McEnroe recounted. “There were times we didn’t think she was going to survive.”
Substance abuse has been a documented issue for O’Neal for decades now. She famously shot to notoriety with the unforgettable performance she gave in her very first movie, 1973’s Paper Moon. The part won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at only 10 years old, but the success eventually turned her into a tabloid fixture as her complicated relationship with her father, actor Ryan O’Neal, and her struggles with addiction overshadowed the promising talent she showed as a child.
“I was an addict my whole life — pretty much on and off for the past 30 to 40 years,” O’Neal told People.
Her most recent health problems kicked off during the Covid-19 pandemic. With a history of rheumatoid arthritis and pain in her back and neck, O’Neal had been prescribed medications that she ended up abusing, as lockdowns forced Americans into the confines of their homes. One day in May 2020, a friend found O’Neal at her apartment, having overdosed on opiates and morphine.
“She had become very isolated,” her son said. “With the addition of morphine and heavier pharmaceuticals, it was getting scary. COVID, chronic pain, all these things led to a place of isolation. In that place, I don’t think, for her, there was much hope.”
O’Neal was rushed to the hospital, and six weeks later, she “woke up from a coma, without any words,” she remembered. Doctors eventually diagnosed her with aphasia, a disorder that can affect one’s ability to produce and interpret speech or writing and occurs when the language areas in the brain are damaged. O’Neal’s son recalled having to tell his siblings that their mother was “thought to be blind, deaf, and potentially might never speak again.”
Things only got harder when Covid-19 protocols prevented O’Neal’s family from visiting her during this traumatic time. But luckily O’Neal has made significant progress over the last three years: She’s visited various rehab facilities as she works to fully regain her memory and the ability to read and write.
O’Neal is also continuing to work on her sobriety. After years of battles with alcohol and drugs, she tells People she’s “been trying to get sober [her] whole life,” but has actually managed to do so since her catastrophic stroke. She said wanting the most time possible with her children has been a big motivator, and her son says he now has “an enormous amount of hope” that she’ll be successful in staying clean.
“To me, this last chapter where she wants to live, wants to get sober, wants to learn — I think it’s a miracle,” McEnroe said. “I think it’s beautiful. I’ve never been more proud to be her son. She’s full of love and full of heart.”
O’Neal adds that she’s been feeling more in touch with her emotions lately, and she’s clear about what her goal is as she continues her recovery.
“I’ve had a hard, hard, hard, hard, hard life,” she said. “I rarely cry, but I am crying a lot more lately, and that’s a very good thing for my life. … Am I sure where I’m gonna go next? No. And neither are my kids sure. But I’m totally trying to get better.”
