EXCLUSIVE: Tatum Talks Ryan O’Neal, Young Hollywood

Tatum O’Neal and her father Ryan celebrated side by side, smiling at the 30th anniversary of their film “Paper Moon,” almost four years ago. These days, such joviality is not a scene you’re likely to see.

“I hope that he does apologize to me but I’m not gonna hold my breath,” Tatum told Access in Part 2 of our interview with the “Rescue Me” star.

Tatum has however reconciled with her father’s longtime girlfriend Farrah Fawcett, who continues to battle cancer. When asked if mending that relationship has helped strengthen ties with her father, Tatum looked away and sighed.

“No,” she said. “But that’s ok.”

Tatum and Ryan O’Neal have been estranged for years. In 2001, Tatum alleged to Access Hollywood she suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Ryan.

“You didn’t want to leave no eggs in the house, you didn’t want to be too noisy, didn’t want to wake him before 11,” she said.

Ryan denies the allegations.

“I wish him the best,” she told Access in our new interview. “I don’t know about the happy endings all the time. Maybe for me to be the woman that I am, I can’t have a happy ending with him. I don’t know.”

It was a very happy beginning. Tatum won an Oscar for “Paper Moon” at the age of 10, but underlying parental problems in her youth put her in the same boat as a few starlets of today and often, just staying focused is a challenge itself.

“[Fame] — it is fleeting,” Tatum said. “It’s not forever and the money goes and the fame goes and then you have to ask yourself what do you have, you know?”

These days, Tatum has a flammable TV career as she brings more sex and scandal to this season’s “Rescue Me.” And, the actress notes, she uses her mother, Joanna Cook, as her character’s inspiration.

“I often say my mother was a very big character and she liked to smoke and drink and she was bigger then life and had a wig and smoked a cigarette,” Tatum said. “So I will often drop into my mother a little bit.”