Tatum O'Neal Busted

Sources told The Post the 44-year-old actress - who became the youngest-ever actress to snag an Oscar, at age 10, for her role in "Paper Moon" - was arrested by detectives from Manhattan South Narcotics near East Broadway and Grand Street.

"I'm Tatum O'Neal," she told the arresting officer. "Can't we forget about this?" according to one source.

The suspected drug dealer also was arrested, the sources said. Both were hauled into the 7th Precinct and were expected to spend the night in custody.

O'Neal lives in a building at East Broadway and Canal.

"She's cool - it's the last thing I thought would happen," said a security official at her apartment building. "I'm shocked."

O'Neal, who has three grown kids with tennis bad-boy John McEnroe, wrote in her 2004 memoir "A Paper Life" that boozing and drug-taking was in her DNA.

Mom/actress Joanna Moore was an alcoholic and hooked on amphetamines even as she was riaising Tatum and her younger brother Griffin in Los Angeles.

"My own young life had eerily echoed Addiee's [her character in 'Paper Moon'] even though my mother was still alive," she wrote.
"In the grip of addiction, she had virtually abandoned me and Griffin, leaving us in squalor - as well as beaten and abused by the men in her life."

Tatum took to the wild life early and hard, though she completed addiction rehab in 1996 and claimed to be clean.

But her acting career was in tatters. Last year, she began a comeback,however, landing film and TV roles, including the alcoholic shrew Maggie, sister of Denis Leary's firefighter Tommy Gavin on "Rescue Me."

In an interview last year, she said she felt sorry for celeb-wreck Britney Spears, saying things started getting better for her when she left LA.

"I was thrust out there as a little kid. It was hard to cope," she told columnist Liz Smith. . "I used to walk with my head down. I was involved with drugs and alcohol. I had a lot of shame and self-hatred.''

NY Post