RIP: Ryan O’Neal, actor who starred in Love Story, Paper Moon, What’s Up, Doc? and Barry Lyndon.

After pairing with Jacqueline Bisset as a jewel thief in Bud Yorkin’s comedy The Thief Who Came to Dinner in 1973, O’Neal and his nine-year-old daughter, Tatum, starred together in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon, the tale of a conman bible salesman and his daughter.

Set in the Midwest during the Great Depression, the film charmed critics and audiences alike; O’Neal père played the role of the exasperated father to perfection, while his daughter shone as his sidekick. For both it was, perhaps, their finest hour. “It is so enjoyable, so funny, so touching,” said The Sunday Telegraph, “that I couldn’t care less about its morals.” Tatum O’Neal won an Oscar for her role.

But as the 1970s wore on, O’Neal’s career took a nosedive. He had already acquired a reputation in the media for being aggressive (one interviewer described in 1971 his “aura of scarcely contained violence”) and his erratic love life was providing more headlines than the films he was making.

In 1975 he starred in Stanley Kubrick’s sublime masterpiece Barry Lyndon, in which he played an 18th-century Irish gent. “Now people say it’s my best work,” he complained in 1991, “but I never got a good job after it.”

Not for all tastes, but like virtually all of Kubrick’s films, Barry Lyndon rewards repeated viewing, and it looks fantastic on Blu-Ray:  Barry Lyndon Finally Receives the Criterion Treatment.