Iconic poster girl and former Charlie's Angels star Farrah Fawcett remained tabloid fodder right to the end when illness prevented her plans to marry partner Ryan O'Neal on her deathbed.
The actress, who had been battling anal cancer since 2006, died yesterday. She was 62.
"She was an angel on Earth and now an angel forever," said actor Lee Majors, an ex-husband who, like others whose lives touched Fawcett's, was caught up in the media whirl around her.
Best known for her TV role, world famous pin-up poster and flowing locks of hair, her illness ensured the last years of her life were well-documented.
"After a long and brave battle with cancer, our beloved Farrah has passed away," O'Neal said yesterday. "Although this is an extremely difficult time for her family and friends, we take comfort in the beautiful times that we shared with Farrah over the years and the knowledge that her life brought joy to so many people around the world."
O'Neal, a onetime companion who had reconciled with Fawcett during her illness, had made headlines with plans to marry Fawcett, but her condition was too grave for the ceremony to take place.
In May, her cancer battle was chronicled in an NBC prime-time documentary, Farrah's Story, some of it shot on home video. An estimated nine million people watched.
Fawcett had initiated the project with a friend and producer, Alana Stewart, after she first learned of her cancer.
Farrah Leni Fawcett was born on Feb. 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Tex., the second of two daughters to James Fawcett, an oilfield contractor, and the former Pauline Evans.
She attended the University of Texas in Austin and studied microbiology before becoming an arts major.
After dropping out of the university, Fawcett moved to Hollywood to pursue acting. She soon found work in commercials for Wella Balsam shampoo and Noxzema shaving cream, among other products. A Noxzema commercial in which she shaved the face of the football star Joe Namath was shown during the 1973 Super Bowl.
Fawcett also found acting work in television, landing guest roles on I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun and other sitcoms.
She appeared in four episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, whose star, Lee Majors, she had married in 1973. When Fawcett was cast on Charlie's Angels, she had a clause written into her contract that allowed her to leave the set every day in time to prepare dinner for Majors. She was billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors until 1979. She and Majors divorced in 1982.
She will always be synonymous with the '70s, but her post-Angels acting career had its share of highs and lows. After leaving the hit show, she made films in quick succession that never reached the heights of her TV career.
In 1981, she starred in the miniseries Murder in Texas, as the wife of a doctor who is subsequently accused of murdering her; in 1984, she made The Burning Bed, a portrait of a battered wife. Both movies were shown on NBC and both performances received strong reviews. In The Burning Bed, Fawcett was one of the first prime-time actresses to forgo cosmetics in favour of a convincing characterization.
Her portrayal of the victim of a rape attack in Extremities (1986), the film version of a William Mastrosimone play, brought a Golden Globe nomination.
Moving from victim to victimizer, Fawcett starred in the TV movie Small Sacrifices (1989) as Diane Downs, the real-life Oregon woman convicted of shooting her children in a bid to win a man uninterested in becoming a father. Fawcett was nominated again for an Emmy and a Golden Globe.
She played the neglected wife of a preacher (Robert Duvall) in The Apostle (1997). She earned her third Emmy nomination in 2003 for a guest role in the TV series The Guardian.
After splitting from Majors, Fawcett entered a long relationship with actor O'Neal and they had a son, Redmond, in 1985. The couple never married and broke up in 1997. They resumed a close friendship by 2003, and O'Neal was her caretaker and confidante during her battle with cancer.
"I fell in love with her all over again because of how she handled this," O'Neal told People magazine.
With files from The New York Times and the Star's wire services.
No comments:
Post a Comment