- Born
- Birth nameTatum Beatrice O'Neal
- Nicknames
- Tantrum
- Tatesky
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Tatum Beatrice O'Neal is an American actress and author. She is the youngest person ever to win a competitive Academy Award, winning at age 10 for her performance as Addie Loggins in Paper Moon (1973) opposite her father, Ryan O'Neal. She also starred as Amanda Wurlitzer in The Bad News Bears (1976), followed by Nickelodeon (1976), and Little Darlings (1980). O'Neal later appeared in guest roles in Sex and the City, 8 Simple Rules and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. From 2006 to 2007, she portrayed Blythe Hunter in the My Network TV drama series Wicked Wicked Games.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bonitao
- SpouseJohn McEnroe(August 1, 1986 - August 3, 1994) (divorced, 3 children)
- Children
- Parents
- RelativesGriffin O'Neal(Sibling)Charles O'Neal(Grandparent)Patricia O'Callaghan(Grandparent)Patrick O'Neal(Half Sibling)Kevin O'Neal(Aunt or Uncle)Redmond O'Neal(Half Sibling)
- Youngest person to ever win a competitive Oscar (Best Supporting Actress, Paper Moon (1973)). The statuette was presented to her by Charles Bronson and wife Jill Ireland (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion / April 2, 1974).
- According to her autobiography "A Paper Life", she was not named after her paternal grandmother as was widely rumored for years but actually named after jazz pianist Art Tatum.
- Michael Jackson claimed she was his first girlfriend and by all accounts his first big love. Tatum denies this in her autobiography, saying all that happened was that he briefly kissed her without permission when she was 12 and he was 17.
- One of a very few performers to win an Oscar for their debut performance.
- Highest paid child star in history when she made The Bad News Bears (1976).
- It was on my dad's TV when I lived with him. When I moved out I said, 'Sorry, Dad, but you have to part with my Oscar.'
- [Recalling one of the few happy memories from her turbulent childhood living with her mother Joanna Moore] To know my mother was to love her--and I do, now that I have accepted an elemental truth: she was 100 percent crazy. Too crazy, as it turned out, to withstand the combustible mix of alcohol, pills, two babies eleven months apart, and a challenging husband. She wasn't always in a fog though. There were times when she would pull herself together and I remember loving her then so much. She used to tell me a bedtime story about a beautiful white horse that would come to me--it's hooves rhythmically beating clip clop clip clop--and be my angel horse. As I fidgeted and twisted in the bedclothes, gnawing at my nails and sucking my thumb, she would stroke me and soothe me with the promise that the angel horse would carry me away, fly me off into the sky. I would fall asleep to the sound of her soft southern voice, intoning clip clop, clip clop.
- [Writing about her mother, actress Joanna Moore] She was extraordinarily beautiful, with blond hair, a perfect heart-shaped face, huge green eyes, lush full lips. She had a smoky seductive voice (which my daughter Emily and I both inherited) warmed by her southern lilt. Though my mother is on screen only for a short time in Touch of Evil (1958), she is masterful as the victim's daughter. My father Ryan O'Neal always said that my mother was the best actor in the family, but it was only after she died, that I came to recognize her power.
- The Bad News Bears (1976) - $350,000 + 9% of net profits
- Paper Moon (1973) - $16,000
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