Farrah Fawcett

Biography

Mary Ferrah Leni Fawcett (February 2, 1947 – June 25, 2009) was an American actress. A four-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee and six-time Golden Globe Award nominee, Fawcett rose to international fame when she played a starring role in the first season of the television series Charlie's Angels. Fawcett began her career in the 1960s appearing in commercials and guest roles on television. During the 1970s, she appeared in numerous television series, including recurring roles on Harry O (1974–1976), and The Six Million Dollar Man (1974–1978) with her then-husband, film and television star Lee Majors. Her iconic red swimsuit poster sold six million copies in its first year in print. With co-stars Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, she starred in the television series Charlie's Angels, playing private investigator Jill Munroe. However, she left at the conclusion of the first season in 1976, returning as a guest star in six episodes during the show's third and fourth seasons (1978–1980). She received her first Golden Globe nomination for her work in the show. In 1983, Fawcett received positive reviews for her performance in the Off-Broadway play Extremities. She was subsequently cast in the 1986 film version and received a Golden Globe nomination. She received Emmy Award nominations for her role as a battered wife in The Burning Bed (1984) and for her portrayal of real-life murderer Diane Downs in Small Sacrifices (1989). Her 1980s work in TV movies earned her four additional Golden Globe nominations. Although Fawcett weathered some negative press for a rambling appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman in 1997, she garnered strong reviews that year for her role in the film The Apostle with Robert Duvall. In the 21st century, she continued acting on television, holding recurring roles on the sitcom Spin City (2001) and the drama The Guardian (2002–2003). For the latter, she received her third Emmy nomination. Her film credits include Love Is a Funny Thing (1969), Myra Breckinridge (1970), Logan's Run (1976), Sunburn (1979), Saturn 3 (1980), The Cannonball Run (1981), Extremities (1986), The Apostle (1997), Dr. T & the Women (2000) and The Cookout (2004). Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006 and died three years later at age 62. The 2009 NBC documentary Farrah's Story chronicled her struggle with the disease. She posthumously earned her fourth Emmy nomination for her work as a producer on Farrah's Story.

== Early life == Mary Ferrah Leni Fawcett was born on February 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas, the younger of two daughters. Her mother, Pauline Alice Evans; 1914–2005, was a homemaker and her father, James William Fawcett (1917–2010), was an oil field contractor. She was of Irish, French, English and Choctaw Native American ancestry. Fawcett once said the name "Ferrah" was "made up" by her mother, because it went well with their last name; she later changed her name to "Farrah". A Roman Catholic, Fawcett began her early education at the parish school of the church her family attended, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Corpus Christi. She graduated from W. B. Ray High School in Corpus Christi, where she was voted "most beautiful" by her classmates in her freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school. Between 1965 and 1968, she attended the University of Texas, where she studied microbiology before switching her major to art, studying under Charles Umlauf, her "favorite professor" with whom she had a close mentoring relationship; in 2017, works by Fawcett were shown at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum in Austin in the exhibit Mentoring a Muse. She lived at the Mayfair House on Pearl Street, west of the campus, and was a member of Delta Delta Delta sorority. In her freshman year of college, she was named one of the "ten most beautiful coeds on campus", and it was the first time that a freshman had been chosen for the honor. Her photos were sent to various agencies in Hollywood. David Mirisch, a Hollywood agent, called her and urged her to come to Los Angeles. She turned him down, but he continued for the next two years. Finally, in the summer of 1968, Fawcett moved to Los Angeles, initially staying at the Hollywood Studio Club, with her parents' permission to "try her luck" in the entertainment industry.

== Career ==

=== Early career ===

When Fawcett arrived in Hollywood at age 21 in 1968, Screen Gems signed her to a $350-a-week contract. She began to appear in commercials for such products as Ultra Brite toothpaste, Noxzema skin cream, Max Factor cosmetics, Mercury Cougar automobiles, and Beautyrest mattresses, among others. Her earliest acting appearances were guest spots on The Flying Nun (1969) and I Dream of Jeannie (1969–70). She made numerous other television appearances, including Getting Together, Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, Mayberry R.F.D., and The Partridge Family. She appeared in four episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man with husband Lee Majors, on The Dating Game and S.W.A.T., and had a recurring role on Harry O alongside David Janssen as the title character's girlfriend, Sue. She had a sizable part in the 1969 French romantic-drama Love Is a Funny Thing. She played the role of Mary Ann Pringle in Myra Breckinridge (1970).

=== Rise to stardom === In 1976, Pro Arts Inc. pitched the idea of a poster of Fawcett to her agent. A photo shoot was then arranged with photographer Bruce McBroom, who was hired by the poster company. According to friend Nels Van Patten, Fawcett styled her own hair and did her makeup without the aid of a mirror. Her blonde highlights were further heightened by a squeeze of lemon juice. Fawcett selected her six favorite pictures from 40 rolls of film, and the choice was eventually narrowed to the one that made her famous. The resulting image of Fawcett in a one-piece red bathing suit is the best-selling poster in history. Fawcett earned a supporting role in Michael Anderson's science-fiction film Logan's Run (1976) with Michael York. She and her husband, television star Lee Majors, were frequent tennis partners with producer Aaron Spelling. Spelling and his business partner eventually chose Fawcett to play Jill Munroe in their upcoming made-for-TV movie, Charlie's Angels, a movie of the week which aired on March 21, 1976, on ABC. The movie starred Fawcett (then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors), Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith as private investigators for Townsend Associates, a detective agency run by a reclusive multimillionaire whom the women had never met in person. Voiced by John Forsythe, the Charles Townsend character presented cases and dispensed advice via a speakerphone to his core team of three female employees, whom he referred to as "Angels". They were aided in the office and occasionally in the field by two male associates, played by character actors David Doyle and David Ogden Stiers. The program quickly earned a huge following, leading the network to air it a second time and approve production for a series, with the pilot's principal cast minus Ogden Stiers.

The Charlie's Angels series proper formally debuted on September 22, 1976. Each of the three actresses was propelled to stardom, but Fawcett dominated popularity polls. She subsequently won a People's Choice Award for Favorite Performer in a New TV Program. In a 1977 interview with TV Guide, she said, "When the show was number three, I thought it was our acting. When we got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra." Fawcett's appearance in the television show boosted sales of her poster, and she earned far more in royalties from poster sales than from her salary for appearing in Charlie's Angels. Her hairstyle went on to become an international trend, with women sporting a "Farrah-do", a "Farrah-flip", or simply "Farrah hair". Iterations of her hair style predominated among American women's hairstyles well into the 1980s. In the spring of 1977, Fawcett left Charlie's Angels after only one season. After a series of legal battles over her contract with ABC, Cheryl Ladd replaced her on the show, portraying Jill Munroe's younger sister Kris Munroe. Over the years, numerous explanations were offered for Fawcett's precipitous withdrawal from the show. Because her husband, Lee Majors, was the star of an established television show as well (ABC's Six Million Dollar Man, which aired from 1974 to 1978), the strain on her marriage due to filming schedules that kept them apart for long periods was frequently cited, but her ambition to broaden her acting abilities in films has also been given as an explanation. She never officially signed her series contract with Spelling, owing to protracted negotiations over royalties from her image's use in peripheral products, which led to an even more protracted lawsuit filed by Spelling and his company when she left the show. As a result of leaving her contract four years early, she reluctantly signed a new contract with ABC, stating that she would make six guest appearances on the series over a two-year period (1978–1980). Charlie's Angels was a global success, maintaining its appeal in syndication and spawning, particularly in the show's first three seasons, a cottage industry of peripheral products, including several series of bubble gum cards, two sets of fashion dolls, numerous posters, puzzles, and school supplies, novelizations of episodes, toy vans, and a board game, all featuring Fawcett's likeness. The "Angels" also appeared on the covers of magazines around the world, from countless fan magazines to TV Guide (four times) to Time. In 2004, the television film Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Charlie's Angels dramatized the events from the show, with supermodel and actress Tricia Helfer portraying Fawcett and Ben Browder portraying Lee Majors, Fawcett's then-husband.

=== Post-Angels film roles ===