Ryan O’Neal on Monday said he got permission from his dead lover, Farrah Fawcett, to discuss in a TV interview the legal battle he fought to win back an Andy Warhol silkscreen of her.
“I talked to her this morning about doing your show,” he told NBC’s “Today” show via satellite. “She said I could do it.”
O’Neal, wearing dark glasses and recovering from a skin-cancer procedure, described how he heard last week that a Los Angeles jury sided with him in the fight over the artwork with the University of Texas.
“My son Patrick called me from the courtroom,” he said. “He texted me. I was laying on the operating table. There was blood running down the side of my face and then there were tears running down the side of my face, mixing with the blood. It was a pretty amazing moment for me.”
The “Love Story” star said Warhol did two silkscreens of Fawcett and gave him one to keep. But the university said it belonged to Fawcett, who left all of her artwork to the university.
Asked how the lawsuit came about, O’Neal said:
“I have enemies, and one of them sent 90 e-mails to the regents there [at UT], said I stole it and that it was worth $30 million and I stole it and they should come get and it.”
During the trial, O’Neal choked up on the witness stand and testified that he regularly spoke to the drawing. “I talk to it. I talk to her. It’s her presence in my life and her son’s life,” he said.
O’Neal told “Today” he would never sell the painting because it represents Fawcett, who died of cancer in 2009. He said he would leave it to her son Redmond. “She was a wonderful woman. That was what was left of her,” he said. “That’s all that was left.”
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy