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Farrah Fawcett Biography

Actor

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Name at birth: Ferrah 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 plus her rampant mane of blonde hair sold a reported 12 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. Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006; she had just completed a documentary about her battle with the disease, titled Farrah's Story, when she died in 2009.

Extra credit: Fawcett attended the University of Texas at Austin... According to a 2009 story in The Daily Mail, "Her Lebanese father, an oilman, had named her after the Arabic for joy. But she asked her parents to change her name to Farrah and they agreed"... 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 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 attractive TV detectives: Andrea Thompson, Imogen Stubbs and Abe Vigoda.

Blog posts mentioning Farrah Fawcett:

• The Best "Charlie's Angels" Photo Ever
• Farrah Fawcett "In Dying Days"
• Farrah Fawcett Hospitalized in LA