Jennifer O'Neill

Jennifer O'Neill (born February 20, 1948) is a Brazilian-American author, model and former actress.

O'Neill was born on February 20, 1948, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Irene Freda (née Pope), a native of London, and Oscar Delgado O'Neill, a Brazilian of Portuguese, Spanish and Irish ancestry.

O'Neill's father, born in Puerto Rico, was a bomber pilot in World War II, and later owned a medical supply company.

Her paternal great-grandfather, Oscar O'Neill Sr., was the president of the Bank of Rio de Janeiro.

O'Neill's mother, one of seven children, was raised in a "poor but close-knit family."

When she was an infant, she relocated with her family to the United States, where she and her older brother Michael were raised in New Rochelle, New York, and Wilton, Connecticut.

O'Neill began riding horses at age 9 and became an accomplished equestrienne, winning upwards of 200 ribbons at horse show competitions in her teens.

At age 14, after her parents informed her the family was relocating to New York City, O'Neill attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills, and fell into a coma for approximately two weeks.

Reflecting on this, she said: "I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to be heard. It was just a rebellion against my parents’ decisions. What seems like a bump in the road as we get older, to a teenager can seem catastrophic... [our moving meant] losing my ability to take care of a horse that I was able to ride. They wouldn't let me take our dog and took her to the pound."

In a later interview, O'Neill said she lacked adequate role models as a child, and described her parents as "completely involved with themselves."

After her family's relocation to New York City, two of O'Neill's neighbors suggested that she model: "That appealed to me, because then I could buy my own horse and no one could take anything away from me again. So I strolled into Eileen Ford’s agency, and she signed me on the spot."

By age 15, while attending the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan, she began appearing on the covers of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Seventeen, earning $80,000 ($ today)

in 1962.

Born in Brazil, and moving to the United States as an infant, she first came to prominence as a teenage model, as well as for her spokesperson work for CoverGirl cosmetics, which began in 1963 and spanned three decades.

In 1963, O'Neill signed a contract with CoverGirl cosmetics, marking the beginning of a thirty-year career as a spokesperson for the company.

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.

Commenting on O'Neill in 1965, Diana Vreeland said: "O'Neill is a dream. She has great distinction."

O'Neill largely used her modeling income to fund her equestrian endeavors, which afforded her to purchase her own horse, named Alezon.

However, when O'Neill was 15 years old, the horse balked before a wall at a horse show, throwing her, causing her to fracture her neck and lower spine in three places.

The injury resulted in her suffering lifelong back pain.

O'Neill eventually dropped out of the Dalton School at age 17 to wed her first husband, IBM executive Dean Rossiter.

In 1968, O'Neill landed a small role in the comedy film For Love of Ivy.

She made her feature film debut in the comedy film For Love of Ivy (1970), followed by a lead role in Howard Hawks's Western film Rio Lobo (1970).

In the mid-1970s, O'Neill appeared in several Italian films, including Luchino Visconti's final feature, The Innocent (1976), and Lucio Fulci's giallo horror film The Psychic (1977).

In 1970, she played her first lead role in the Howard Hawks film Rio Lobo co-starring John Wayne.

O'Neill's breakthrough role came in Robert Mulligan's period drama Summer of '42 (1971), in which she portrayed the wife of an army serviceman during World War II, who becomes the subject of a teenage boy's romantic attraction.

The same year, she starred in Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends.

She had a supporting role in Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends (1971) starring Dyan Cannon and Ken Howard.

In the 1971 film Summer of '42, O'Neill played Dorothy Walker, the early-20s wife of an airman who has gone off to fight in World War II.

In 1972, she co-starred with Tom Jones in David Winters's television special The Special London Bridge Special.

The same year, she starred in the crime thriller The Carey Treatment (1972), and the drama Glass Houses, the latter of which was filmed in 1970.

This was followed by a lead role in Lady Ice (1973) opposite Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall.

O'Neill next had a leading role in the psychological horror film The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), co-starring with Michael Sarrazin and Margot Kidder, and directed by J. Lee Thompson.

She later starred in David Cronenberg's cult horror film Scanners (1981), and in the short-lived television series Cover Up (1984–1985).

In 1988, O'Neill became a born-again Christian and, inspired by her feelings of regret over having an abortion at age 22, became active in the anti-abortion movement.

Since the 1990s, O'Neill has occasionally appeared in film and television, including roles in the independent film Doonby (2013) and the Rachel Scott biopic I'm Not Ashamed (2016).

She has since authored several books, including a memoir, Surviving Myself (1999), in which she detailed her career, marriages, experiences with anxiety and postpartum depression, and her religious faith.

O'Neill founded the Hope & Healing at Hillenglade foundation in Nashville, Tennessee, an equine therapy foundation that specializes in treating war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

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.

The film was a box-office success and went on to attract a cult following.