Jennifer O'Neill is a Brazilian-American actress, model, author and speaker, known for her role in the 1971 film Summer of '42 and modelling for CoverGirl cosmetics starting in 1963.
Early life
O'Neill was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her mother was English and her father was a Brazilian of Portuguese, Spanish and Irish ancestry. She and her older brother Michael were raised in New Rochelle, New York, and Wilton, Connecticut. When she was 14, the family moved to New York City. On Easter Sunday, 1962, O'Neill attempted suicide because the move would separate her from her dog Mandy and horse Monty — "her whole world". That same year, she was discovered by the Ford modeling agency. By age 15, while attending the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan, she was appearing on the covers of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Seventeen, earning $80,000 in 1962. An accomplished equestrienne, O'Neill won upwards of 200 ribbons at horse show competitions in her teens. With her modelling fees, she had purchased a horse, named Alezon. However, it once balked before a wall at a horse show, throwing her, and breaking her neck and back in three places. She attended New York City's Professional Children's School and the Dalton School in Manhattan, but dropped out to wed her first husband, IBM executive Dean Rossiter, at age 17. O'Neill has dual citizenship, being a Brazilian and American citizen.
Career
In 1968 O'Neill landed a small role in For Love of Ivy. In 1970 she played her first lead role in Rio Lobo. O'Neill may be best remembered for her role in the 1971 film Summer of '42, where she played Dorothy Walker, the early-20s wife of an airman who has gone off to fight in World War II. She stated in a 2002 interview that her agent had to fight to even get a reading for the part, since the role had been cast for an "older woman" to a "coming of age" 15-year-old boy, and the director was only considering actresses over the age of thirty, Barbra Streisand being at the top of the list. O'Neill continued acting for the next two decades. She appeared in Hollywood feature films, made-for-television films, and European films, such as Italian director Luchino Visconti's last film, The Innocent. When her movie career slowed, O'Neill took roles in series television. She starred in NBC's short-lived 1982 prime time soap opera Bare Essence and played the lead female role on the 1984 television series Cover Up. O'Neill is listed in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History's Center for Advertising History for her long-standing contract with CoverGirl cosmetics as its model and spokesperson in ads and television commercials.
Personal life
O'Neill has been married nine times to eight husbands. She has three children from three fathers.
Ex-husband Nick de Noia was murdered in 1987 by one of his former associates. On October 23, 1982, O'Neill suffered a gunshot wound in her home on McClain Street in Bedford, New York. Police officers who interviewed O'Neill determined that she had accidentally shot herself in the abdomen with a.38 caliber revolver at her 30-acre, 25-room French-style estate while trying to determine if the weapon was loaded. Her fifth husband at the time, John Lederer, was not in the house when the handgun was discharged, but two other people were in the house. Detective Sgt. Thomas Rothwell was quoted as having said that O'Neill "didn't know much about guns." On October 12, 1984, Jon-Erik Hexum, O'Neill's co-star in the Cover Up television series, mortally wounded himself on the show's set, unaware that a gun loaded with a blank cartridge could still cause extreme damage from the effect of expanding powder gasses. He died six days later. In her 1999 autobiography Surviving Myself, O'Neill describes many of her life experiences, including her marriages, career, and her move to her Tennessee farm in the late 1990s. She has said that she wrote the autobiography "... at the prompting of her children."
Activism
In 2004, O'Neill wrote and published From Fallen to Forgiven, a book of biographical notes and thoughts about life and existence. O'Neill recounted how she underwent an abortion while dating a Wall Street socialite after the divorce from her first husband. Her regrets over the experience contributed to her becoming a pro-life activist and a born-again Christian in 1986 at age 38. She also began counseling abstinence to teens. Concerning her abortion, she writes: O'Neill continues to be active as a writer working on her second autobiography, CoverStory, an inspirational speaker, and fundraiser for the benefit of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States. She has also served as the spokesperson for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, an organization for people who regret that they or their partners had abortions.
