Jennifer O'Neill

Jennifer O'Neill
Born	February 20, 1948 (1948-02-20) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Occupation	Actress, model, writer, speaker, horse trainer.
Years active	1968–present
Spouse	Mervin Louque (1997-present)
Website
www.jenniferoneill.com

Jennifer O'Neill (born February 20, 1948) is an American actress, model, author and speaker.

Early life

Jennifer O'Neill was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the grand-daughter of a Brazilian bank president, and the daughter of a famous Spanish-Irish medical and dental supply import/export businessman, Oscar D' O'Neill and his English wife, Irene Freda, a homemaker. O'Neill and her older brother Michael were raised in New Rochelle, New York and Wilton, Connecticut.

When she was 14, the family moved to New York City. On Easter Sunday, 1962, O'Neill attempted suicide because the move would separate her from her dog Mandy and horse Monty -- "her whole world". That same year, she was discovered by the Ford modeling agency and put under contract. By age 15, she was gracing the cover of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and other magazines, earning $80,000 a year in 1962 working as a fashion model in New York City and also working in Paris, France and dating older men.^{[citation needed]} She hit the top of her field within a year or two with other magazine covers and commercial advertising.

An excellent rider, O'Neill won upwards of 200 ribbons at horse show competitions in her teens. She saved up her modeling fees and bought a horse, Alezon, who balked before a wall at a horse show, breaking O'Neill's neck and back in three places and giving her a long period of recovery.^{[citation needed]} She attended New York City's Professional Children's School and the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan. Later, she moved on to films and worked in a number of television movies and series made for television.

Career

In 1968 O'Neill landed a small role in For Love of Ivy. In 1970 she played one of the lead female roles in Rio Lobo starring opposite John Wayne.

She is most remembered for her success in the blockbuster movie Summer of '42 in 1971 which made her a household name, where she played Dorothy Walker, the young widow of a pilot, Peter, shot down and killed in World War II. The film was shot in Northern California at a budget of a million dollars, grossed over thirty-two million dollars, and was nominated for four Academy Awards.

Jennifer O’Neill gave an extensive and very detailed "behind the scenes of Summer of '42" interview to columnist / features writer Louis Hillary Park of Scripps Treasure Coast Publishing from her Tennessee home. In this interview she reveals that her agent had to fight to even get a reading for the part, since the role had been cast for an "older woman" to a "coming of age" 15 year old boy, and the director was only considering actresses over the age of thirty, Barbara Streisand being at the top of the list.

O'Neill became an acclaimed Hollywood and television actress, and continued acting for the next two decades. She appeared in profitable, though less critically acclaimed, movies such as The Carey Treatment (1972), Lady Ice (1973), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), Caravans (1978), A Force of One (1979), Scanners (1981), and The Cover Girl Murders (1993 made-for-television film). She went to Europe in 1976 and was there for a short time, working with Italian director Luchino Visconti. She appeared in his last film L'innocente (1976), where she played the part of the mistress, Teresa Raffo.

She has also had success in various TV movies, including Love's Savage Fury. In 1982, O'Neill starred in the short-lived NBC prime time soap opera Bare Essence. Her credits include singing in the Chrysler Corporation commercial "Change in Charger" that represented the end of the Dodge Charger in 1975. In 1984, she played the lead female role on the CBS television series Cover Up; the lead male actor, Jon-Erik Hexum, was killed on the studio set playing Russian roulette with a blank cartridge loaded gun, and the series ended after just one season (with Antony Hamilton as the new male lead).

O'Neill is also catalogued in the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History's Center for Advertising History for her long standing 30 year contract with Cover Girl cosmetics as its model and spokesperson in ads and television commercials.

Personal life

O'Neill is a self-described "romantic" whose personal love life has seen its ups and downs. O'Neill has been married nine times to eight husbands (she married one husband twice); at one point, she was married to four different men in four years. At age 44, she married husband #7 sooner than any other actress, sooner than Zsa Zsa Gabor (who was 63), Liza Minnelli (59) and Lana Turner (49), making her the fastest "most married" Hollywood celebrity. The August 23, 1993 issue of People magazine reports that a friend of O'Neill's says that the actress obtained the (Texas) annulment of marriage #7 (Neil L. Bonin - after less than five months) "...because she felt stifled."

O'Neill has three children from as many fathers, a daughter (Aimee) by her first husband whom she married at age 17, and a son (Reis Michael) from her fifth marriage and another son (Cooper Alan) from her sixth marriage.^{[citation needed]} A lifelong competitive horseback rider, she has suffered serious back injuries due to falls.^{[citation needed]}

She describes many of her life experiences, including her marriages and career, to her move to her Tennessee farm in the late 1990s in her 1999 autobiography Surviving Myself. O'Neill says that she wrote this autobiography (her first book) "…at the prompting of her children."

In 2004, O'Neill wrote and published From Fallen To Forgiven, a book of biographical notes and philosophical thoughts about life and existence. The actress, who had an abortion after the divorce from her first husband while dating a Wall Street socialite, became a pro-life activist and a born-again Christian in 1986 at age 38, counseling abstinence to teens. Concerning her abortion, she writes:

I was told a lie from the pit of hell: that my baby was just a blob of tissue. The aftermath of abortion can be equally deadly for both mother and unborn child. A woman who has an abortion is sentenced to bear that for the rest of her life.

O'Neill continues to be active as a writer and inspirational speaker, and has raised over two million dollars for the benefit of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States. She has served as the spokesperson for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, a non-denominational, non-political, non-profit organization dedicated to post-abortion healing and recovery; she also offers these resources for women.

O'Neill works for several other charitable causes as well, such as Retinitis Pigmentosa International and the Arthritis Foundation. As a breast cancer survivor she has also been a former spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. She has also hosted a one hour television special for World Vision shot in Africa concerning the HIV epidemic. In addition, she remains actively involved with her childhood love of animals and horses, sponsoring the Jennifer O'Neill Tennis Tournament to benefit the ASPCA, and fund-raiser for Guiding Eyes for the blind.

O'Neill maintains a horse farm in Tennessee that she runs as retreat for girls and young women.

Personal quote

I cared very much about being a good actress, and I learned over the years. But it wasn't my main motivating force in life; that was my drive for relationships. The concept of letting a great offer go for the sake of a marriage is unheard of in America. I didn't make popular decisions. I never moved to Hollywood. I didn't take my clothes off to act. Hollywood never owned me. My need for love owned me.

Filmography

Film
Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1968	For Love of Ivy	Sandy
1969	Futz!
1970	Rio Lobo	Shasta Delaney
1971	Summer of '42	Dorothy
	Such Good Friends	Miranda Graham
1972	Glass Houses	Bad Character
	The Carey Treatment	Georgia Hightower
1973	Lady Ice	Paula Booth
1975	The Flower in His Mouth	Elena Bardi
	The Reincarnation of Peter Proud	Ann Curtis
	Whiffs	Lt. Scottie Hallam
1976	L'innocente	Teresa Raffo
	Call Girl: La vida privada de una señorita bien
1977	Sette note in nero	Virginia Ducci
1978	Caravans	Ellen Jasper
1979	A Force of One	Mandy Rust
	Steel	Cass Cassidy
1980	Cloud Dancer	Helen St. Clair
1981	Scanners	Kim Obrist
1987	I Love N.Y.	Irene
1990	Committed	Susan Manning
1992	Invasion of Privacy	Hillary Wayne	Direct-to-Video Release
	Love Is Like That	Ms. Alman
1993	Discretion Assured	Paige
1994	The Visual Bible: Acts	Lydia	Direct-to-Video Release
1997	The Corporate Ladder	Irene Grace
	Raney	Dr. Bridges
	The Ride	Ellen Stillwell
1999	The Prince and the Surfer	Queen Albertina
2002	Time Changer	Michelle Bain
2008	Billy: The Early Years	Reporter
2009	Last Ounce of Courage	Dottie	post-production
Television
Year	Title	Role	Notes
1979	Love's Savage Fury	Laurel Taggart	ABC TV-Movie
1981	The Other Victim	Nancy Langford	CBS TV-Movie
1983	Bare Essence	Lady Bobbi Rowan
1984–1985	Cover Up	Danielle Reynolds
1985	A.D. (miniseries)	Valeria Messalina	Miniseries
	Chase	Sandy Albright	CBS TV-Movie
1986	Perry Mason: The Case of the Shooting Star	Alison Carr	NBC TV-Movie
1988	The Red Spider	Stephanie Hartford	CBS TV-Movie
	Glory Days	Scotty Moran	CBS TV-Movie
1989	Full Exposure: The Sex Tapes Scandal	Debralee Taft	NBC TV-Movie
1990	Personals	Heather Moore	TV-Movie
1992	Perfect Family	Maggie	TV-Movie
1993	The Cover Girl Murders	Kate	TV-Movie
1994	Jonathan Stone: Threat of Innocence	Nan Stone	NBC TV-Movie
1995	Silver Strand	Louellen Peterson	Showtime TV-Movie
1996	Poltergeist: The Legacy	Lorraine Compton	Episode: Revelations
1997	Nash Bridges	Jenny	Episode: Shake, Rattle & Roll
2000	On Music Row	Linda Rodgers	TV-Movie

Books written

• Surviving Myself, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1999.
• From Fallen to Forgiven, Thomas Nelson, 2002.
• You're Not Alone: Healing Through God's Grace After Abortion. Faith Communications, 2005.
• Remarkable Women, Insight Publishing Group, 2005.
• A Fall Together, B&H Publishing Group, 2006.
• A Winter of Wonders, B&H Publishing Group, 2007.
• A Late Spring Frost, B&H Publishing Group, 2007
• Faith Lessons, Insight Publishing Group, 2008.
• Soul DNA, Balboa Press, 2010
• CoverStory (To be released 2012).

External links

• Jennifer O'Neill at the Internet Movie Database
• Official website
• Interview with Jennifer O'Neill
• Jennifer O'Neill Directory
• O'Neill Shares Pro-Life Message