Following her time on Charlie’s Angels, Farrah Fawcett became a huge celebrity; her distinctive hairdo and “pin-up” status only contributed to increase her notoriety.
Fawcett went through difficult times in her life at the same period. She had a multi-million dollar lawsuit pending against her former company, and she was known to have occasionally tangled love lives.Her turbulent relationship with actor Ryan O’Neal in the 1990s was nothing short of a disaster.
The saddest aspect of all, though, was that she ultimately made the decision to end her relationship with him due to a very unexpected finding.What you need to know about cult favorite actress Farrah Fawcett is here!
On February 2, 1947, Farrah Fawcett was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. She was the second child of Pauline and Jim; Pauline was a stay-at-home mom, and Jim was an oil field contractor.At birth, Farrah was given the name Ferrah, which is Arabic for joy. Later, she made the decision to alter it.
Fawcett would go on to become one of the most attractive “golden girls” of her generation.Her mother, Pauline, told the Texas Monthly that when she brought Farrah into a store, shoppers would pause their cart and exclaim, “She looks like an a-n-g-e-l.” Pauline further asserted that neighboring kids frequented their home expressly to see her.
For Farrah, it wasn’t all good news, either. Even while her mother appreciated that everyone admired her daughter, it subsequently caused her problems. Farrah was aware of her beauty, yet even that presented challenges for her.
“I always felt so self-conscious,” Farrah’s mother Pauline recalled the actress saying. “I wanted people not to look at me because so many people kept looking at me.”
There’s no disputing that Fawcett’s appearance became a significant aspect of her life, even though appearances aren’t everything. She won the “Most Beautiful” award from her high school peers three years in a row. Then, in 1965, she relocated to Austin to attend the University of Texas, and during her first year of college, she was once more chosen as the “Most Beautiful” student.
Fawcett attended the University of Texas to study both microbiology and art. But a year after she started, a new kind of career started to take off. A picture of Farrah was sent to Hollywood PR expert David Mirisch after she was selected as one of the “Ten Most Beautiful” women at the University of Texas. He called her because he felt she was gorgeous and wanted to persuade her to go to Los Angeles so he could help her start a modeling career there.
Now, Mirsch had a number of other well-known clients, such as Patt Boone and Perry Como. He called Farrah while she was still in class to persuade her to drop out and move to Hollywood. Mirisch persisted despite Fawcett’s requests for him to speak with her father.
After completing her junior year, Farrah finally came to a conclusion. A photographer for the Texas Student Publications took her picture in a park in Texas. Her intention was to visit Los Angeles for a brief period of time to get a taste of the city before returning to school for her senior year.
As we now know, that never happened.
After relocating to Los Angeles, Fawcett quickly got a deal with Screen Gems, which reportedly paid her roughly $360 per week. She started performing work for Max Factor and Mercury Cougar Cars, as well as advertisements for Wela Balsam and Ultra-Brite toothpaste.
Farrah was a talented actor as well as a fantastic model. After a few more assignments as a model, which involved posing for numerous magazine covers, she started landing acting roles in the middle of the 1960s. Soon after, she started starring in television advertisements.
She initially appeared in television series such as I Dream of Jeannie, The Partridge Family, and The Flying Nun.
At that time, Farrah was on a steady rise towards fame. Then, everything changed in 1976, as she became world-famous thanks to two jobs.
Farrah was cast in the 1975 television movie Murder on Flight 502 by renowned television producer Aaron Spelling. He had been quite taken with her acting after that. After that, he made the decision to put her in a brand-new television series called Charlie’s Angels, which would feature three female detectives as its main characters.
“We were looking for the California beach-girl type, and Farrah was perfect for that,” he wrote in his 1996 memoir A Prime-Time Life. “She was drop-dead gorgeous and the living image of the beautiful L.A blonde in tennis shorts or a bathing suit.”
The program premiered in September 1976, and despite some harsh criticism, the audience adored it. Alongside Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, Farrah played the role of agent Jill Munroe on the show. She was mostly responsible, in Spelling’s opinion, for Charlie’s Angels’ positive reception among viewers.
“We thought about changing it for a moment in the beginning, and had we been doing a traditional cop show, we would have,” he wrote. “But her hair helped make the show. It became one of our signatures.”
Like her father, Lisa Marie Presley is a musician. She has continued to be in the public eye while building her own musical career. Lisa has been married four times and has gone through three divorces. Her marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage have garnered a lot of media attention.
“Her feathered, high-lighted, layered phenomenon was a work of art that looked as if it had just come out of the sea and had been tossed by the wind into a state of careless perfection. Farrah’s hair was emblematic of women in the first stage of liberation – strong, confident, and joyous – before the reality of mortgage payments and single parenthood set in,” the Times wrote, as quoted by Texas Monthly.
However, Farrah had had enough of Charlie’s Angels after just one season. She believed that the lengthy production schedule and the screenplay both needed improvement. She therefore deemed her contract void and fled.
A $7 million contract breach case was then filed against her. Fawcett later consented to return for six more episodes as part of a settlement. She only made an appearance in 29 of the 115 episodes, yet she was still the big star.
“I left Charlie’s Angels because I felt creatively stifled,” Farrah said.
“Now, when I go back to Charlie’s Angels, it is much better. I have a chance to work with the writers on the script and the director. I can treat it like a business, I could not do that before, I was hurt at first because I was sued.”
She added: “I read things in the press that hurt, like things that girls had said. All of that is past now. We are all friends again. I feel much better.”
In addition to being a well-known Hollywood star thanks to Charlie’s Angels, Fawcett also made an appearance on a billboard that essentially transformed her life. She made an appearance on a poster in 1976, the same year the drama television series debuted. She was dressed in a red one-piece swimming suit.
It went on to become one of the all-time best-selling posters and aided in her rise to international fame.
“The combination of that poster with Charlie’s Angels was a phenomenon that was hard to escape. Something like 12 million boys plus had that poster on their walls, so it’s hard to avoid the big smile, big hair, and that bathing suit,” Mike Pingel explained.
Life as a celebrity wasn’t always enjoyable for Fawcett at the same time she gained international recognition. She claimed in a 1979 interview that authors were free to invent stories about her because they knew they would be popular.
“I go through life thinking everything is wonderful,” Farrah Fawcett said. “People keep things from me. I don’t read most of the things about me. You almost have to quit reading to keep from being hurt. Writers write unflattering things bout you because that sells.”
“Sometimes I get very sad,” she added. “I just want to go out and be myself; I would like to just go shopping or go to the movies and buy popcorn and sit quietly in the audience. But I am constantly watched. Things like going to dinner with friends become very precious.”
She’s spoken several times about how she wants to have control of all aspects of her life and brand. Yet, as we all know, Hollywood can be a notoriously harsh environment to work in.
“I think what has bothered me the most was all of the merchandising. Things over which I had no control: the bedsheets and things like that. I didn’t, like any of that, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it,” she explained.
As she started her career in television, Fawcett had a difficult start to the 1980s. She received many roles, but none of them allowed her to truly establish herself as a brilliant actor.
After that, in 1984, Farrah produced and acted in the television show The Burning Bed, for which she received widespread acclaim and a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or a Special at the Emmy Awards.
She received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special for her work in Small Sacrifices five years later. She was then nominated a third time in 2001 for her work in The Guardian.
Fawcett’s private life was turbulent as she became into a cult figure. She was married to Lee Majors from 1973 to 1982, but over the years, she has also been in a number of well-known partnerships, including one with Canadian director James Orr.
The one that gained the greatest notoriety—and may have been more significant to Fawcett—was her protracted union with actor Ryan O’Neal.
In 1979, O’Neal saw Fawcett for the first time. He was Lee Majors’ close friend and claimed to have once caught a glimpse of a “beautiful girl.” The girl in question was Farrah.
“She’s delightful, full of childlike warmth,” O’Neal wrote in his 2012 book Both of Us: My Life with Farrah. “There is no pretense or cattiness about her whatsoever, she’s vibrant and wholesome, refreshing in this town.”
One evening, Majors requested O’Neal to take Farrah to dinner while he was away from the city. After they started dating, O’Neal quickly joined Lee Major and Farrah Fawcett’s inner circle. He got to observe the couple’s marriage crumble up close as he spent more time with them.
“They were saying the marriage was over, and I was saying they were terrific together,” O’Neal recalled.
“She said, ‘Lee, remember when we were first married, and we were in Nevada, and you’d leave me in some dinky cabin and go to a bar? You’d tell me to get undressed and get in bed and wait for you, but you never came back.’ His answer was ‘Same man now as I was then.’”
Even though Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett didn’t get divorced until 1982, they had already split up by 1979. Even though O’Neal was a friend of Majors, Fawcett and O’Neal didn’t hide their relationship from the media and even had a kiss while being questioned by reporters.
“Farrah and I have no plans to marry — nor do we have plans to separate,” O’Neal said. “Don’t fix what ain’t broken.”
In 1985, Fawcett gave birth to the couple’s son, Redmond O’Neal. However, the relationship didn’t last forever.
According to rumors, Farrah Fawcett witnessed her boyfriend dating Leslie Ann Stefanso around 1997. The couple divorced in 1998, but they reconciled after O’Neal was given a leukemia diagnosis in 2001. Ryan devoted his time to caring for Farrah Fawcett when she was diagnosed with cancer herself five years later.
“The hair is gone,” he mentioned while he was watching over her.
“Her famous hair. I have it at home. She didn’t care. I rub her head. It’s kind of fun, actually, this great, tiny little head. How she carried all that hair, I’ll never know. She doesn’t have a vanity about it.”
“It’s a love story. I just don’t know how to play this one. I won’t know this world without her. Cancer is an insidious enemy,” O’Neal added.
Farrah Fawcett, 62, passed away on June 25, 2009. Ryan O’Neal lost his soul love, and her son Redmond lost his mother. Moreover, a magnificent star was lost to the universe. Farrah’s estimated net worth at the time of her passing was $20 million.
In his book, O’Neal explained how Farrah passed away in his arms.
“After the priest leaves, I lie down next to her, wrap my body around her to keep her warm, and then take her hand. I can feel a steady pulse… I caress her hand for hours. Her heart refuses to quit,” O’Neal wrote in Both Of Us: My Life With Farrah.
“I’m left alone with my love. I take her hand. I can still feel her pulse, but now it is fluttering. She’s trying to let go. Her heartbeat slows, then disappears. On the morning of June 25, Farrah slips into eternal sleep.”
O’Neal still feels remorse about the past after having spent three decades with Farrah.
“I would have been much kinder, more understanding, more mature,” he remarked, saying he wished he could have a do-over.
“I’d lose some of the savagery. I don’t know how she got cancer; maybe some of it was me.
“But ultimately, there was never a day I didn’t love her.”
Hollywood great Farrah Fawcett gave numerous memorable performances on cinema, and she will always be remembered for them. Please spread the word about this post on Facebook to your loved ones in honor of her legacy.