Los Angeles - Actor Ryan O'Neal has expressed regret about his treatment of long-time partner Farrah Fawcett, who died in June after a long battle with cancer.

Speaking out publicly for the first time since her death, O'Neal told Vanity Fair magazine that he wishes he could "do it over," changing how he treated the late actress during their decades together.

"I would have been much kinder, more understanding, more mature. I'd lose some of the savagery. I don't know how she got cancer; maybe some of it was me," O'Neal said.

O'Neal said he had been "a jerk" in the way he argued with Fawcett, saying of their split in the 1990s that Farrah "was going through some kind of change. I didn't have a change of life; I was always a jerk."

The couple did manage to reconnect in 2001 when O'Neal was diagnosed with leukemia. "I talked to her every day. We pulled apart, but we never popped loose," O'Neal said.(dpa)