Taylor-Ann Magnus is the first child of seven-time world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, and for most of her 29 years he has been a stranger to her. She has met him only a handful of times. She did not watch him win at the Crucible. She has told her own daughter’s story to two newspapers and then gone quiet, and the quiet has lasted four years.
While O’Sullivan spent early 2026 in Dubai with his new wife, returning to the table to post the highest break in the history of professional snooker, his eldest daughter was at home in Romford, Essex, paying him no attention at all.
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Who is Taylor-Ann Magnus
She was born in 1996, during O’Sullivan’s relationship with Sally-Ann Magnus. She carries her mother’s surname rather than her father’s, which tells you most of what you need to know about who raised her.
She lives in Essex with her daughter, Zarah-Ann. She has spoken publicly twice, once to The Sun in 2020 and once to the Daily Mirror in 2022, both times about the same thing: a father who was never really there, and a decision to keep him out of her child’s life.
A childhood that began with both grandparents in prison
The year she was born, the O’Sullivan family was in pieces.
Her grandfather, Ronnie O’Sullivan Snr, had been jailed for murder in 1992 and was serving an 18-year sentence. Her grandmother, Maria, was given 12 months for tax evasion in 1996, the year Taylor-Ann arrived. With both of them locked up, Sally-Ann had moved into the family home.
The arrangement collapsed almost as quickly as it started. The Daily Star reported that once Maria was released, she forced Sally-Ann out of the house, and the relationship between her parents ended soon after. Taylor-Ann was barely a year old.
What followed was years of near-total absence. She has said she saw her father only a handful of times growing up, and that the last of those meetings happened when she was 17 or 18, around 2014. They have not been in contact since.
The phone call that never came
What sealed the estrangement was not her own upbringing. It was what happened when she became a mother herself.
When Taylor-Ann announced she was pregnant, the news reached her secondhand, through one of O’Sullivan’s friends, who said he was excited to be a grandfather. She let herself believe he might finally show up. Around the same time, he was telling reporters how much he wanted to know the baby.
He never called her himself. Speaking to The Sun in 2020, after Zarah-Ann was born, she said: “He never contacted me personally once. It broke my heart.”
That was the end of it for her. She deleted his number and decided her daughter would grow up without him in the picture.
Quick facts: Taylor-Ann Magnus
| Born | 1996 |
| Father | Ronnie O’Sullivan, seven-time world snooker champion |
| Mother | Sally-Ann Magnus |
| Daughter | Zarah-Ann, born around 2018 to 2019 |
| Home | Romford, Essex |
| Last contact with her father | Aged 17 or 18, around 2014 |
| Public interviews | The Sun (2020), Daily Mirror (2022) |
Forgiveness, without letting him back in
Her second interview, with the Daily Mirror in May 2022, came just after O’Sullivan equalled Stephen Hendry’s record of seven world titles. He had celebrated that win at the Crucible by hugging his two younger children, Lily and Ronnie Jr, in front of the television cameras. Taylor-Ann was not there and had not been watching.
What she said pulls apart two things people tend to assume come together. She had forgiven her father privately, years earlier, and said so plainly. She still wanted him nowhere near her or her child.
- On where she had landed emotionally, she said she had made peace with his absence within herself, while being clear that this did not excuse it.
- On letting him in: “I wouldn’t want someone like that around me and my child.”
- On money, she was blunt. She was living in a rented flat and working for a car park company, and said she neither needed nor wanted anything from a man reported to be worth around ยฃ32 million.
So she was not a daughter waiting for an apology. She had settled the matter in her own head and moved on with raising Zarah-Ann. The forgiveness and the closed door were not in conflict for her. They sat together.
O’Sullivan broke his silence in 2025
For a long time he said almost nothing about his oldest child. That changed in November 2025, in an interview with The Times.
Asked whether the rift could be permanent, he said he hoped not, and admitted: “I think I’ve got to make some sort of amends.” He could not say how he would do it, or whether it would work, only that he hoped things might one day resolve.
He said it from a comfortable place. He had married actress Laila Rouass in June 2025, moved to Dubai, and was playing some of the best snooker of his life. The man talking about amends was, by every visible measure, doing fine.
Where things stand now
Taylor-Ann has not answered. No statement, no interview, no public reply to anything her father has said. No reporter has confirmed any meeting between O’Sullivan and the granddaughter he has still never met.
That silence is the whole story now. She said what she had to say, twice, and then closed the subject. The one still asking for a way back is him.
For someone the press only ever writes about as a footnote to a famous man, she has ended up holding the only thing that footnote rarely gets. The next move is hers, and so far she has chosen not to make it.
Reporting drawn from interviews published by The Sun (2020), the Daily Mirror (2022) and The Times (2025), with background from the Daily Star, SportBible and GB News.
