Free Watch Me: A Memoir by Anjelica Huston Page A

out there all week long. He was only eleven, surfing and smoking weed, and although this seemed a matter to warrant concern, the attention was mostly centered on his sister. Ryan had gained custody of the children when Tatum was six, because of their mother’s substance abuse. I felt bad for them, these tough little survivors. They had charm, but poor examples to follow in life, and in the big picture I don’t believe that Ryan had much of a conscience, guilty or otherwise. He could go from Jekyll to Hyde in a heartbeat.
    Ryan had recently returned from Ireland when we first met. It was part of a bond he ventured to establish between us, calling me “Big Irish” and telling me all about his adventures with Stanley Kubrick, the director of Barry Lyndon. He was very proud that he had been chosen for that film. It was the mark of artistic validation he had been seeking.
    Ryan bolstered himself with two friends from his days as a student at Palisades High, Greg Hodell and Joe Amsler. Joe had the dubious distinction of having been one of the jesters who in the sixties kidnapped Frank Sinatra, Jr., as a prank, an offense for which he was lucky to have done only three years and nine months of time at Lompoc Prison, and not lost his neck. Joe and Greg were cast in Ryan’s image, muscled and tall and athletic, but just a little rougher than he was. They say you wind up looking like who you really are. Joe and Greg took the rap first.
    One day we were up in the Malibu Mountains. Joe and Greg were jumping from rock to rock above a chasm; the terrain was very steep, perhaps a two-hundred-foot drop. Joe was carrying a beer and missed a foothold on the rock and plummeted backward. I thought for sure he was a goner. At the last second he grasped a little bunch of weeds and saved himself from a deadly fall. These guys were literally living on the edge. It was part of their makeup. There was often the sense with them that you’d made it through another potentially hairy situation but that it probably wouldn’t be the last.
    In time I was to learn that there was something distinctly perverse about the O’Neal household. When I went to see Ryan in Amsterdam, where he was filming A Bridge Too Far , Greg and Joe were there with him; there was a strange atmosphere,and I could sense Ryan’s distance. Tatum’s demeanor had altered toward me as well—she loved me but was now expected to lie to me on Ryan’s behalf.
    Even though my pride was hurt, there was a modicum of relief when I found out Ryan was sleeping with another girl. I don’t think Ryan was capable of love without some kind of downside.
    Ultimately, it was revealed that a young actress had just left for the airport and that she had been sharing Ryan’s bed. She was a playmate of Tatum’s and another kind of playmate to Ryan. And yet I stayed on after a confrontation. I knew that Tatum cared for me, and Ryan’s sleeping with her friend must have cost her a wealth of divided loyalties. When Ryan took me to the location, I saw that Dirk Bogarde had a part in the film, and I asked Ryan to knock on the door of his trailer. Dirk had been a friend of my mother’s, and we had spent many Sundays at his house in the English countryside when I was a teenager. When Dirk appeared in the doorway of his camper, he was delightful to Ryan but sour to me, and only later did I realize he hadn’t recognized me. I retreated, feeling hurt. He wrote me a note the next day, apologizing for his mistake and calling me a “silly goose.”
    I regretted leaving Jack. I hated causing him pain. Yet despite the way things were going with Ryan, I returned from Holland via London with him. One night a photographer jumped out from a dark side street in Knightsbridge as we came out of Mr Chow, but we outran him. In the year and a half I was with Ryan, I never had my picture taken with him in public. His innocent blue eyes, his automatic, coy smile for the cameras, his compliments, those big warm boxer’s