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Ryan O’Neal Back On Stage With Ali MacGraw After All These Years

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 01:39 PST, Feb 12, 2016

Ryan O’Neal has long been in the hearts of fans everywhere, along with his leading lady, Ali MacGraw. This is, of course, thanks to their beautiful and tragic 1970 movie called Love Story, in which Ryan O’Neal played a rich Harvard student who married a working-class girl (MacGraw) against his parents’ wishes, only for her to die from cancer.

Now, Mass Live reports that Ryan O’Neal has gotten together with MacGraw once again, in part to reminisce but also to put on a stage production called Love Letters. The play runs from February 2-7 at the Citi Performing Arts Center in Boston and then from February 9-14 at the Bushnell in Hartford. It is about a couple who keeps in touch through letters over a span of 50 years as they go about their own separate lives. Director Gregory D. Mosher said it’s amazing to have Ryan O’Neal and MacGraw come together for the production.

“It’s kind of magic and amazing. To be playing parts opposite each other is moving to them and is moving for the audience as well.”

Mosher also speaks about how Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw are still such beautiful people.

“They were beautiful kids, and in a way they are more beautiful now. He is still ludicrously handsome… She is still stunningly beautiful. It’s fantastic to see people with their lives on their faces.”

USA Today reports that as part of the promotion of their new touring play, Ryan O’Neal and MacGraw returned to Harvard, 45 years after filming Love Story. They took some time to speak with Harvard students about Love Story and their lives since they starred in the famous movie.

What about acting together again after all these years? The Boston Herald reports that the two are ecstatic to be working together again, although apparently Ryan O’Neal has been trying to get MacGraw to do a project with him for years. MacGraw said of Love Letters that she wasn’t nervous in part because she was with O’Neal.

“That first night we performed Love Letters (in Florida last year), I wasn’t nervous for two reasons. One, we read these letters so I didn’t have to worry about memorizing lines. Two, I had Ryan with me.”

Ryan O’Neal only had positive things to say about his co-star.

“She is wonderful in this. Every night she is more wonderful and stronger and better.”

Entertainment Tonight caught up with the couple and spoke with them about their history together. Ryan O’Neal said there is something special about love stories.

“You know there’s a feeling that great love stories don’t end up together. That’s the heartbreak of love.”

When it comes to Ryan O’Neal’s past, he has had much more than his big movie with MacGraw or even his acting career. One of the highlights of his life was his on-again-off-again relationship with the late Farrah Fawcett, with whom he had a son, Redmond O’Neal.

My News LA reports that there is an Andy Warhol portrait of Fawcett that is in the possession of Richard Bernard Francis that O’Neal is fighting to obtain. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Feffer says there are grounds for a lawsuit.

“The pleadings are sufficient at this stage. Whether a jury buys it may be a different story.”

Whether or not he wins the lawsuit, certainly Ryan O’Neal will feel good that he attempted to gain possession of the portrait. In the meantime, he is having the time of his life reuniting with Ali MacGraw!

[Photo by Aaron Davidson/Getty Images]

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