ScribnerAccording to Anjelica Huston, her relationship with Ryan O'Neal nearly 40 years ago was more volatile than anyone ever realized.
In her upcoming book Watch Me: A Memoir, the now 63-year-old Oscar winner and member of one of Hollywood's most famed acting and filmmaking dynasties writes that her then live-in boyfriend assaulted her during a party at a Beverly Hills mansion in the late 1970s.
"He turned on me, grabbed me by the hair and hit me in the forehead with the top of his skull," she writes in an excerpt from the autobiography, which is due out next spring. "I saw stars and reeled back. Half blind I ran away from him."
According to the excerpt, first obtained by The National Enquirer, Huston ran into a bathroom where security guards and Ryan's brother Kevin O'Neal tried to comfort her.
O'Neal eventually convinced her to let him into the bathroom and, she wrote, "No sooner had I complied than Ryan was in the bathroom, batting me about the head with open hands. Then, abruptly, he left."
The Prizzi's Honor star recalls returning home later to find O'Neal in their bedroom holding an ice pack, upon which he quipped that he had "quite a headache." Huston wrote that she broke up with him soon after that and ultimately reunited with former beau Jack Nicholson, whom she dated on and off until 1989.
O'Neal, 73, was twice divorced by the time he was with Huston and after their split he famously entered into a rocky relationship with Farrah Fawcett that continued on and off until her death in 2009.
Huston ultimately married artist Robert Graham in 1982 and were together until he died in 2008.