Charlie's fallen angel
SHE fought in public with her lovers and then against the cancer which took her life. But the star of Charlie’s Angels will always be remembered for her golden smile...
In the days before her death yesterday Farrah Fawcett’s long- time lover, actor Ryan O’Neal, announced his desperate wish to marry the actress to forever cement their romance of almost three decades.
“I’ve asked her to marry me, again, and she’s agreed,” said O’Neal, 68.
But bed-ridden Farrah was too weak to speak, sedated through much of the day and barely conscious. “As soon as she can say yes,” he said.
“Maybe she can just nod her head.” Yet despite O’neal’s hopes of tying the knot in one last, grand romantic gesture, it was not to be. Farrah did not have the strength to utter the words: “I do.”
It was one last broken dream in a lifetime of great successes marred by personal torment. She was a TV icon and cultural touchstone, the last of the classic pin-up girls and an acclaimed actress.
She embodied a flawless smile, broad cheekbones, long legs and that cascading mane of golden blonde hair that launched thousands of teenage crushes.
But Farrah, who died aged only 62 after a lengthy battle with cancer, will long be remembered for her brave fight for life, putting a face to the pain and suffering.
“It’s seriously time for a miracle,” she told television cameras last month as experimental treatments failed to halt the spreading illness.
“I do not want to die of this disease. I want to stay alive.”
However if Farrah’s last years were spent in the caring embrace of O’Neal the previous decades were marked by
bitter break-ups, tormented romances, broken hearts and recriminations.
She was still a model and struggling actress when she wed Six Million Dollar Man star Lee Majors in 1973.
Their stormy marriage ended six years later when she began a passionate romance with O’Neal, the star of classic movie romance Love Story.
Her own love story with O’Neal was a rollercoaster of passion and break-ups. They had son Redmond in 1985 but Farrah rebuffed O’Neal’s marriage proposals.
“If it ain’t broken why fix it,” she said.
Yet their romance often was broken and with the passing years her behaviour became more erratic.
She famously shocked viewers of the Late Show With David Letterman in 1997, appearing to be incoherent or slow-witted as she struggled to put sentences together.
She seemed to believe that the show’s painted backdrop was real. That year she launched a career as an artist by covering her naked body with paint and rolling across sheets of canvas.
She was also troubled by Redmond’s long-running battle with drugs, arrests and rehab. he confessed to being a heroin addict in 2004 and all Farrah’s attempts to get her son sober were in vain.
The oil field worker’s daughter was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, on February 2, 1947, and her name was invented by her mother because it seemed to go well with her last name.
While at the University of Texas she was featured in a magazine pictorial of the college’s ten Most Beautiful girls, which led a publicist to invite her to Hollywood.
She dropped out of college and arrived in Los Angeles in 1969, quickly establishing a successful modelling career.
She appeared in TV commercials for toothpaste, shaving cream and shampoo and began winning guest spots on tV shows including I Dream Of Jeannie and the Six Million Dollar Man.
Farrah only appeared in a single season of TV’s bikinis-and-guns action series Charlie’s Angels yet she became known as the iconic Angel: her curvaceous figure, dazzling smile and sensuous golden locks inspired millions of women to emulate her style.
Her appearance on Charlie’s Angels coincided with the release of her pin-up poster clad in a red one-piece bathing
suit, which became a worldwide bestseller with more than eight million sales.
Yet she was desperate to prove that she was capable of more than filling a swimsuit and flashing a million-dollar smile.
Gritty roles on stage and TV, including portrayals of battered wives and wronged women further added to her reputation as an actress.
But as Farrah aged and her behaviour grew more bizarre, Hollywood stopped calling with major parts.
And then in 2006 she fell victim to cancer.
Her three-year battle for life took Farrah through experimental clinics in Germany and numerous hospitals in America.
She seemed to have beaten the disease last year and was declared “cancer-free” but the illness returned – with a vengeance.
In her final weeks O’Neal nursed the actress while she slipped in and out of consciousness. When Redmond was allowed to leave prison (he had been jailed on drug charges) and make a visit to her bedside in May, his ankles manacled and wrists chained, Farrah barely registered his presence.
She leaves behind Ryan O’Neal, and the great love story of his life. “I know this,” he says.
“That in the last two years i loved her more than i’ve ever loved her. She’s so much more of a woman, powerful, courageous, fearless and all those adjectives. And i look at her with awe.”
The world will remember her as all that and more: a flawed, often troubled actress, who shone brilliantly for a few short years as an icon of the self-obsessed Seventies, a radiant beauty whose looks hid a formidable talent but also that of a tormented soul.
