A real Hollywood-style tell-all, this is the extremely candid and highly explosive autobiography of one of the movie industry's most talented and troubled young stars.

At age ten, Tatum O'Neal became the youngest Oscar winner in history for her performance in the film classic Paper Moon. As the sidekick to her father, the flamboyant star and man-about-town Ryan O'Neal, she became a fixture at the most glamorous Hollywood parties and counted celebrities ranging from Cher to Stanley Kubrick among her childhood friends.

Yet behind the glittering façade of Tatum's life lay heartbreak: abandonment, abuse, neglect, and drug addiction. She reveals the most intimate secrets of her dysfunctional relationships with her father, Ryan O'Neal, and stepmother, Farrah Fawcett, as well as her alcoholic mother, Joanna Moore, and ex-husband, tennis pro John McEnroe.

After the collapse of her marriage and with no real family to turn to, Tatum succumbed to the demons of her past that would nearly kill her. Now she has emerged clean and sober, rediscovering herself as an actress, mother, and wonderfully vibrant woman in what she considers the prime of her life.

Reviews:
"Forget ‘Mommie Dearest;’...it looks as if Tatum O’Neal’s A PAPER LIFE...might be the new classic. -- Philadelphia Inquirer

Daily News
"In her red-hot tome, O’Neal dishes on the...Hollywood of the 1970s - in all its raunchiness."

Philadelphia Inquirer
"Forget ‘Mommie Dearest’;...it looks as if Tatum O’Neal’s A PAPER LIFE, out Tuesday, might be the new classic.

People
"In her bombshell autobiography...Tatum O’Neal...names names...while telling, for the first time, an eye-popping story..."

Janet Maslin, New York Times
"A Paper Life, her slash-and-burn family album about…oh, go read it. You know you want to."

Publishers Weekly
"In this honest, disturbing memoir, O’Neal...reveals the behind-the-scenes story of her lonely, chaotic life...

Liz Smith
"I know memoirs are always described as ‘explosive,’ but this one really is."

Philadelphia Inquirer
"Forget ‘Mommie Dearest;’...it looks as if Tatum O’Neal’s A PAPER LIFE...might be the new classic

Read A Paper Life by Tatum O'Neal Online

Paperback: 336 pages
Author: Tatum O'Neal
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (October 4, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060751029
ISBN-13: 978-0060751029

Visit A Paper Life by Tatum O'Neal HarperCollins Website

About the Author:

Tatum O'Neal made her screen debut as a pint-size con artist in the 1973 film Paper Moon, costarring with her father, Ryan O'Neal, and winning that year's Academy Award for best supporting actress.

She has been acting on and off ever since, notably in such memorable movies as The Bad News Bears (1976) and Basquiat (1996). Married at age twenty-two to John McEnroe, she is the mother of three children. She lives in New York City.

Book Excerpt:

The story of paper moon reflects my childhood, but it also closely parallels my mother’s and strangely foreshadows my daughter’s. Three generations of women: we all lost our mothers early in life -- the first literally, to death; the second virtually, to addiction; and the third, my daughter, temporarily, when I succumbed to familiar demons. It is a cycle that I’m determined to break.

My mother was born, like Addie, in the heart of the Great Depression, not in Kansas but in Americus, Georgia. The elder of two daughters of Henry and Dorothy English Cook, she was named for her mother but later christened herself Joanna. A letter from her cousin Libba that I discovered after her death depicts her early childhood as cozy: rocking on the old porch swing, sitting by the potbellied stove, sliding down the banister at her grandmother’s.

She was the only one not in the car when her father swerved off the road because her mom fell asleep on his shoulder, plunging down a sandy embankment into a ravine. Both her mother and her baby sister, Virginia, died instantly. Libba’s letter recalls, in haunting detail, how she got the news: “We were on the playground. . . . My ma had come to school.  ...

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