Jennifer O'Neill - Personal Life

Personal Life

O'Neill has been married nine times to eight husbands (she married, divorced, and remarried husband number six); at one point, she was married to four different men in four years. At age 44, she married husband number seven sooner than any other actress, sooner than Zsa Zsa Gabor (who was 63), Liza Minnelli (59) and Lana Turner (49), making her the youngest "most married" Hollywood celebrity. The August 23, 1993, issue of People magazine reports that a friend of O'Neill's says that the actress obtained the (Texas) annulment of marriage number seven (Neil L. Bonin - after less than five months) "... because she felt stifled."

O'Neill has three children from as many fathers, a daughter (Aimee) by her first husband whom she married at age 17, and a son (Reis Michael) from her fifth marriage and another son (Cooper Alan) from her sixth marriage.

At age 34, O'Neill suffered a gunshot wound. Police officers in the Westchester County town of Bedford, New York, who interviewed the actress, said that on October 23, 1982, she shot herself accidentally in the abdomen with a .38 caliber revolver at her Bedford mansion while she was trying to determine if it was loaded.

She describes many of her life experiences, including her marriages and career, to her move to her Tennessee farm in the late 1990s in her 1999 autobiography Surviving Myself. O'Neill says that she wrote this autobiography (her first book) "… at the prompting of her children."

In 2004, O'Neill wrote and published From Fallen To Forgiven, a book of biographical notes and philosophical thoughts about life and existence. The actress, who had an abortion after the divorce from her first husband while dating a Wall Street socialite, became a pro-life activist and a born-again Christian in 1986 at age 38, counseling abstinence to teens. Concerning her abortion, she writes:

I was told a lie from the pit of hell: that my baby was just a blob of tissue. The aftermath of abortion can be equally deadly for both mother and unborn child. A woman who has an abortion is sentenced to bear that for the rest of her life.

O'Neill continues to be active as a writer, inspirational speaker, fundraiser for the benefit of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States. She has also served as the spokesperson for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, a non-denominational, non-political, non-profit organization dedicated to post-abortion healing and recovery.

O'Neill works for several other charitable causes as well, such as Retinitis Pigmentosa International and the Arthritis Foundation. As a breast cancer survivor she has also been a former spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. She has also hosted a one hour television special for World Vision shot in Africa concerning the HIV epidemic. In addition, she remains actively involved with her childhood love of animals and horses, sponsoring the Jennifer O'Neill Tennis Tournament to benefit the ASPCA, and fund-raiser for Guiding Eyes for the blind.

O'Neill purchased a horse farm in Tennessee called Hillenglade Farm where she runs a non-profit organization as a ministry and retreat for girls and young women.