Actress Farrah Fawcett died 25 June 2009, after a long battle with anal cancer. Born 2 February 1947 in Corpus Christi, Texas, she first came to fame in the 1970s when she starred in Charlie’s Angels and posed for one of the best-selling pin-up posters of all time. She left the television series after only one season, angling for a career in films, but she had very little success at first. Her career finally took off again in 1984, when she starred in the tv movie The Burning Bed, as an abused wife.
Like this reporter, Fawcett attended the University of Texas at Austin. Her fellow students voted her one of the ten most beautiful people on the campus, and her photos came to the attention of a movie publicist who suggested a film career. Over her parents’ objections, she agreed. In the mid-1960s, she began her acting career with guest appearances on television. In 1973, married actor Lee Majors, after which she had several guest appearances on his tv series, The Six Million Dollar Man, and then came Charlie’s Angels.
Fawcett and Majors divorced in 1982, and she dropped his last name, returning to “Farrah Fawcett”. She and Majors separated in 1980, and from then until 1997, she and actor Ryan O’Neal were “longtime companions” (they had one son together, Redmond, in 1985). When she was first diagnosed with cancer in 2006, she and O’Neal reunited, and were together to the end. Earlier this month, O’Neal asked Fawcett to marry him.
Throughout her career, she was nominated for four Emmy Awards, six Golden Globes, and two Razzies. She won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Female Performer in a New TV Program in 1977.
Her other genre appearances include The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998), Saturn 3 (1980), Logan’s Run (1976), and I Dream of Genie (1969).
She is survived by her son, O’Neal, and her father. For more on Fawcett’s life and career, WINS has this nice obituary.