February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The defrocked King of Pop dragged Tatum into the spotlight this week by claiming that she tried to seduce him back in 1975.
“She knew I was too shy for it,” he told British interviewer Martin Bashir.
“I was frightened. I was afraid,” he said.
Tatum remembers things differently.
“”Michael did come over to my house when my father was home,” she told NBC. “But at 12 years old, there was no way I was capable of being as mature or as sophisticated as he claimed I was. [He has] a very vivid imagination.”
The daughter of “Love Story” heartthrob Ryan O’Neal, Tatum won an Oscar at the age of 10 for her role in “Paper Moon” and later went on to minor celebrity as a teen sensation, starring in teenybopper classics as “The Bad News Bears” and “Little Darlings.” Her parents divorced when she was a child, and her father began a relationship with ’70s Golden Girl Farrah Fawcett, whom Tatum heartily disliked.
As an adult, Tatum married tennis ace John McEnroe, with whom she had three children. The actress’s increasing dependency on drugs soon torpedoed the relationship, and Tatum found herself divorced and in rehab. McEnroe has since remarried — to pop singer Patty Smythe, formerly of the ’80s band Scandal.