Terry O'Neill

He was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2004 and the society's Centenary Medal in 2011. His work is held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

• Name — Terry O'Neill • Birth Name — Terence Patrick O'Neill • Born — 30 July 1938 • Birthplace — Romford, Essex, England • Died — 16 November 2019 • Place of death — London, England • Occupation — Photographer • Children — 3

O'Neill was born to Irish parents in Romford, Essex, and began his career working in a photographic unit for an airline at London's Heathrow Airport. During this time, he photographed a sleeping figure in a waiting area who, by happenstance, was revealed to be Home Secretary Rab Butler. O'Neill thereafter found further employment on Fleet Street with The Daily Sketch in 1959. His first professional job was to photograph Laurence Olivier. During the 1960s, in addition to photographing contemporary celebrities such as Judy Garland, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he also photographed members of the British royal family and prominent politicians, showing a more human side to these subjects than had usually been portrayed —his photographs capture his subjects candidly or in unconventional settings. O'Neill's photographs of Elton John are among his best known. A selection of them appeared in the 2008 book Eltonography. Also considered among his most famous images are a series of American actress Faye Dunaway (his girlfriend at the time) at dawn on 29 March 1977, lounging next to the swimming pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel the morning after winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for Network, with several newspapers scattered around her and her Oscar statuette prominently shown on a table beside her breakfast tray. The series was photographed in both colour and black and white. O'Neill was credited (as Terrence O'Neill) as an executive producer of the film Mommie Dearest (1981). His only other film credit was for still photography for the opera film Aria (1987).

O'Neill was married to the actress Vera Day for 13 years; they had two children together, Keegan Alexander and Sarah Jane. He had a decade-long relationship with Faye Dunaway; they were married for five years in the 1980s and had a son, Liam. In 2003, he was quoted in the US tabloid magazine Star as saying Liam was adopted and not their biological son, contrary to Dunaway's public assertions. In 2001 O'Neill married Laraine Ashton, a former model agency executive. O'Neill died on 16 November 2019 at his home in London from prostate cancer, at the age of 81.

• Terry O'Neill: Celebrity, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2003/4 • Photographs by Terry O'Neill, San Francisco Art Exchange, San Francisco, CA, 2005 • Kings and Queens: Photographs by Terry O'Neill, San Francisco Art Exchange, San Francisco, CA, 2007 • Chairman of the Board, Knight of the Realm: Photographs of Frank Sinatra and Sir Elton John, San Francisco Art Exchange, San Francisco, CA, 2009 • Getty Image Gallery, the Village, Westfield London, London, 2009. A retrospective. • Leeds Gallery, Munro House, Leeds, UK, 2011. A retrospective. • Terry O'Neill's Rock & Roll Opus, San Francisco Art Exchange, San Francisco, CA, 2014 • Terry O'Neill: Stars, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2022 • Terry O'Neill: Stars, Fotografiska, New York, 2023 • Famous by Terry O'Neill, Fotomuseum aan het Vrijthof, Maastricht, 2023. Curated by Feiko Koster.