The Oscar winning actress says her June 8, 2008 drug arrest and conviction scared her straight.
The "Paper Moon" star told Oprah she would probably still be using cocaine and spiraling out of control if not for the police intervention after the drug purchase and arrest.
O'Neal told Winfrey,
"I felt very alone in my apartment, I felt helpless. I got close to relapsing. It was close enough. Too close for comfort."
Watch Video Of Tatum O'Neal And Oprah Winfrey:
In addition to "Paper Moon", the actress also starred in "The Bad News Bears", "International Velvet", "The Scoundrel's Wife" with Tim Curry, and recently appeared in fifty-one episodes of the television series "Wicked Wicked Games", about a scorned woman who plots revenge against the man who abandoned her 25 years earlier in order to marry another woman.
O'Neal is currently wrapping up work on the dramatic "Saving Grace", due in theaters later this year, and starring Michael Biehn. The film, set in a 1950s-era Missouri town where the life of a couple is thrown into chaos when the husband's sister is released from the local asylum and comes to live with the family.
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