Ryan O’Neal’s name added to Farrah Fawcett’s gravestone – something actress never wanted: friends
It’s a grave insult.
The name of late, hot-headed actor Ryan O’Neal has now been added to Farrah Fawcett’s tombstone at a celebrity-heavy cemetery in Los Angeles — which she never wanted, friends say.
“It’s a travesty,” Craig Nevius, Farrah’s friend and the producer of the 2005 reality TV show, “Chasing Farrah” and the 2009 documentary about her fight with cancer, “Farrah’s Story.”
“Farrah wanted to be cremated, first of all. She was very specific about that. She didn’t want to be a tourist attraction. She didn’t want to be buried and she didn’t want to be buried with Ryan. If she saw this, she’d pick up something heavy and throw it at Ryan,” Nevius told The Post.
Several of Fawcett’s friends say O’Neal, who died of congestive heart failure in December at age 82, manipulated her in the last months of her life, as she was dying from cancer, in order to bask posthumously in her glow for all eternity as tourists come to gawk.
Fawcett’s large tombstone in Westwood Village Memorial Park had been oddly left blank, except for her name at the top, since her death from anal cancer at age 62 in 2009.
Even stranger, Fawcett’s birthdate and day of death were not added until her on-again-off-again lover’s name and his birth and death dates were carved into the stone late last month.
“It was like he was the more important one and in fact the opposite is true,” Nevius said.
“It may have been a great love story at the beginning and he could certainly be charming but the monster always came out. This is all about him making the world think she belonged to him and that it was a love story like the movie.”
O’Neal’s biggest hit was 1970’s “Love Story,” in which he played a Harvard student who falls in love with a Radcliffe girl, played by Ali McGraw, who dies of a blood disease.
He was famously estranged at times from two of his four children, actress Tatum O’Neal, 60, and Griffin O’Neal, 59, from his first marriage.
His long-troubled son, Redmond, is currently incarcerated at a state hospital in California.
Another son, Patrick, 56, an LA sportcaster, is loyal to his father and has called out negative stories about him.
Patrick has long maintained that Farrah was the love of Ryan’s life.
Fawcett’s former personal assistant Mike Pingel and her friend, actress Michelle Lintel, both told The Post they were angry and heartsick after seeing the grave with O’Neal’s name on it.
“It was all about what Ryan wanted, not Farrah,” said Pingel, who remembered the “Charlie’s Angels” star as a ‘terrific boss and a terrific friend.”
“Farrah’s great love was (her son) Redmond, not Ryan. Her mother was cremated and she told me she wanted that, too. She wanted peace, not to be in a celebrity cemetery.”
Lintel became emotional when recounting how she helped Fawcett pack for her last trip to Germany, where she had tried in vain different treatments for her cancer.
She told The Post she witnessed some disturbing moments during the last months of Fawcett’s life, including one time when she said Fawcett was trying to stuff some papers in the vault in her closet and didn’t want Ryan to see her doing it.
Like Nevius, Lintel was not allowed access to Farrah in the last months of her life, when they say O’Neal took over.
“He could give two s—ts about her,” Lintel said.
“She was the bigger star and he resented that and tried to control her through their son. The only reason she stayed connected to Ryan was because of Redmond. If she’d wanted to be buried with him, she would have said yes to marrying him. She didn’t. She deserved better in life than how he treated her.”
Patrick O’Neal did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
