Troubled actress Tatum O'Neal was busted last night for buying crack and cocaine from a homeless guy just blocks from her Lower East Side luxury apartment. Sources told The Post the 44-year-old actress was arrested at 7:30 p.m. by detectives from Manhattan South Narcotics on Clinton Street between East Broadway and Grand Street. When cops approached, the Oscar-winning actress tried to pull the "don't you know who I am?'" celebrity routine.
She reportedly told cops, 'You know who I am, right?' ", then added, 'I'm researching a part - I'm doing this for a part as a junkie.' "
The source said detectives found a pipe on O'Neal, daughter of actor Ryan O'Neal and ex-wife of tennis star John MacEnroe. The pipe and screen were clean.
"Then she said she'd been clean for two years, and that she'd just came out today," the source said.
"Can't we just forget about this?" sources said she begged the detectives.
The suspected drug dealer, Alan Garcia, 33, also was arrested, the sources said. Both were hauled into the 7th Precinct and were expected to spend the night in custody.
"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 McEnroe, wrote in her 2004 memoir "A Paper Life" that boozing and drug-taking was in her DNA, though she completed addiction rehab in 1996 and claimed to be clean.
She was charged early today with criminal possession of a controlled substance; Garcia with criminal sale of a controlled substance.
