He survived a violent past in which his famous father once fired a gun at him. Now Griffin O'Neal has emerged from the shadow of his painful upbringing to shine in the role in which Ryan fell short - fatherhood.

The former bad boy, who once seemed hell-bent on a path of self-destruction, has been sober for four years and finally found happiness in marriage with his second wife Joanna and their son Audie, two.

‘This is the first time I have had the opportunity to live a life and be loved the way I should have been loved from the beginning,' 44-year-old Griffin tells New Idea.

‘I suppose the best thing my dad gave me was the perfect negative role model,' he says. ‘If there was anything I learnt from him, it was how not to raise your kids.'

Ryan O'Neal, 68, is as famous for his bad behaviour as his acting career.

At the June funeral of his long-term, on-off love Farrah Fawcett, he hit on a blonde... only to find it was actually his daughter Tatum, 45.

Griffin isn't surprised by any of his father's antics. He gives a heartbreaking insight into growing up with a violent-tempered man who gave him marijuana at the age of six.

‘Dad shoved a marijuana pipe in my mouth,' he recalls. ‘He was hosting a party and thought it would be funny if I was rolling around on the floor stoned.'

Ryan also introduced Griffin to cocaine at 11, and then, when Griffin was 14, Ryan made him his personal international drug courier, telling the teenager to stuff cocaine into his socks as, according to Griffin, ‘He thought it would be less likely to be detected on a child.'

It led Griffin into four decades of boozing, drug-taking and run-ins with the law, until love turned his life around. He says, ‘Jo and Audie are the light of my life. Without them, and my two other children, I don't know if I would want to be around anymore.'

Dysfunction and danger

Griffin - whose mother, Ryan's first wife Joanna Moore, died in 1997 - once lived the high life, bankrolled by his dad. But he's now been cut off from the family fortune and lives with his family in a converted garage on a ranch outside San Diego in California, hand-making guitars in a factory. Making ends meet can be tough, but he insists life couldn't be better.

‘I may not have millions of dollars or a mansion, but I can give my children happiness, love, patience and good memories,' he says. ‘They are the things that really make life rich.'

He hasn't spoken to Ryan since a brawl involving a fireplace poker at Ryan's mansion in 2007.

Joanna, who was pregnant, suffered four facial fractures and needed eight facial stitches, and Ryan fired his gun during the exchange. In fact, Ryan's in contact with only one of his children - Redmond, 24, his son with Farrah Fawcett, who's in drug rehab after time in jail.

Griffin is irate that Ryan's tried to paint a picture of he and Farrah sharing an epic love. He reveals their relationship was beset by his dad's infidelity and violence, leading to him breaking her arm during an incident in 1983.

‘I'd ask Farrah, "What are you still doing here? You could get any man in the world who will treat you kind, care for you and love you." She said, "Once you have a kid with somebody you have to try and stay as loyal as possible."'

He insists Ryan got close to Farrah again only at the end of her life for financial reasons.

‘My dad's only goal was to make sure he'd be in the will. It was so transparent. Little did he know Farrah saw through that and didn't leave him anything.

‘Ryan was a horror of a father and not even a good friend. I just want people to know the truth. There is no Camelot story here.'

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