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Tatum O’Neal claims she was buying crack cocaine to research a part

June 2nd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Tatum O’Neal began her acting career in 1973 at the age of ten. She became the youngest ever actor to win an Acadamy Award for her performance as an adorable con in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon. It was her first film. Two years later she played the only girl on an all-boy little league team in Michael Ritchie’s enjoyable comedy The Bad News Bears. When Bogdanovich’s Nickelodeon tanked in 1976 he career pretty much ceased to exist.

To be adored, Oscared and obsolete all by the age of fourteen.

Last night O’Neal, 44, left her Manhattan luxury apartment in search of a bag of crack cocaine. She walked a few blocks to Clinton Street between East Broadway and Grand Street where she met up with suspected drug dealer Alan Garcia, 33. Both were arrested - O’Neal for criminal possession of a controlled substance and Garcia for sale of said substance - and expected to spend the night in custody.

When the arresting officers approached the two, O’Neal asked, “You know who I am, right?,” a source reportedly told the New York Post. Fast on her feet Tatum came up with the best line of dialog she has delivered in over twenty years: “I’m researching a part - I’m doing this for a part.”

If the part in question involved playing a sad, crack smoking has-been, there could be another Oscar-worth performance in Tatum’s future. She begged the arresting officer, “Can’t we just forget about this?”

In her 2004 autobiography A Paper Life, Ms. O’Neal admitted that drinking and drug-taking was in her DNA. O’Neal’s mother, Joanna Moore, was an alcoholic on a diet of amphetamines. “In the grip of addiction, [my mother] had virtually abandoned me and Griffin [her younger brother], leaving us in squalor - as well as beaten and abused by the men in her life,” wrote O’Neal.

It wasn’t long before Ms. O’Neal began seeking comfort in heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and other drugs.

While dad Ryan never went the rehab route, he was well known for not being the easiest man to live with. His on-again, off-again relationship with Farrah Fawcett helped sell many a tabloid. Last year Prosecutors decided not to file charges against him following a brawl with his son Griffin and allegations of assault.

Her well-publicized tempestuous marriage to tennis star John McEnroe didn’t do much to elevate her self-esteem.

A friend worked with Tatum O’Neal on the ill-fated 2006 telenovela Wicked Wicked Games. She said the actress was professional, accessible and, at the time, apparently drug free. At the time of her arrest, O’Neal apparently told police that she’d been clean for two years and that she’d just came out today. A squeaky clean pipe with a brand new screen was reportedly found on her person.

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