Farrah Fawcett

Actor

Name at birth: Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett

Farrah Fawcett played Jill Munroe in the original cast of the 1970s TV show Charlie's Angels, joining Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith in the titular trio of distaff detectives. The show made Fawcett a star and she briefly became America's hottest pin-up; a famous poster of her wearing a red swimsuit and a rampant mane of blonde hair sold over eight million copies. She left Charlie's Angels after one season (1976-77) to embrace a movie career, but her popularity never again reached the same heights. She did win acclaim as a battered wife in the TV movie The Burning Bed (1984), and her feature films include Logan's Run (1976, with Jenny Agutter), Extremities (1986), and The Apostle (1997, with Robert Duvall). She was married to actor Lee Majors (star of TV's The Bionic Man) from 1973-1983, and was at times billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors. She later had a long love affair with actor Ryan O'Neal; they had one son, Redmond, born in 1985.

Extra credit: Fawcett announced in October 2006 that she was being treated for intestinal cancer... She attended the University of Texas at Austin... Fawcett was replaced on Charlie's Angels by Cheryl Ladd, who played Jill Munroe's sister Kris... Fawcett did not appear in the 2000 feature film Charlie's Angels, which starred Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz... Fawcett has made a specialty of biographical films, starring at different times as heiress Barbara Hutton, photographer Margaret Bourke-White, Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld and notorious murderer Diane Downs.

Other hot-stuff TV detectives: Andrea Thompson, Imogen Stubbs and Abe Vigoda.