Anjelica Huston addressed the domestic abuse allegations she wrote about actor Ryan O’Neal in her new memoir, “Watch Me,” while appearing on the “Today Show” on Monday.
“It’s my feeling that any man who lifts a hand against a woman deserves to be outed,” Huston said during the interview (above). “So I’ll sort of leave it at that.”
The 63-year-old Oscar winner wrote in her new book that she was assaulted by O’Neal, her boyfriend at the time, at a Beverly Hills mansion.
“He turned on me, grabbed me by the hair and hit me in the forehead with the top of his skull,” she wrote. “I saw stars and reeled back. Half blind, I ran away from him.”
The same night, she followed O’Neal into a bathroom to speak privately, but only ended up receiving another round of abuse, instead.
“No sooner had I complied then Ryan was in the bathroom, batting me about the head with open hands,” Huston wrote. “Then, abruptly, he left.”
Huston said she ended the relationship with O’Neal immediately, and called the writing process “cathartic.”
“It was good to relive certain things, because you get a perspective,” she added.
Among other things Huston revisited in the memoir is her 17-year relationship with actor Jack Nicholson, who was a frequent philanderer. Although she “knew what he was up to,” she admits she didn’t “handle it well” at points, and writes about attacking him with a “vast array of direct punches.”
There is no bad blood between the former couple these days, though. Nicholson even approved the passages detailing their romance before “Watch Me” was published.
“The thing about being with somebody who’s that much in the public eye, who is that charming and is that charismatic is that you kind of have to go along with the program,” she said. “It’s not like you’re going to break all those habits.”