Farrah Leni Fawcett was born on February 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Her father was an oil-field contractor and her mother a homemaker. Her cousin, Jan Fawcett, also went on to become an actress, starring in The Apostle with Robert Duvall and Billy Bob Thornton. Farrah initially wanted to be a scientist and studied microbiology at the University of Texas in Austin, but ended up switching her major to art. At the age of twenty-one she moved to California to try her luck at modelling and acting. Her first role was in Claude Lelouch's Un homme qui me plaît, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Annie Girardot, but it was in television that she was to make her name. In 1970 Farrah was charged with 2 counts of shop lifting and was placed on 18 months probabtion and was given a $100.00 fine. Farrah maintains she was returning items to the store and was refused the return and was merely swapping the items herself.
Fawcett's television career began with an appearance as a showgirl in an episode of Mayberry RFD, alongside Forrest Compton and Norman Leavitt. She went on to appear in popular series such as I Dream of Jeannie, with Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman; The Partridge Family, with Shirley Jones and David Cassidy; and The Six Million Dollar Man, on the set of which she met Lee Majors, whom she married.
The couple formed their own production company, Fawcett-Majors Productions. It was at this point that Fawcett finally broke into modeling, and a famous poster of her in a swimsuit sold millions of copies. This led Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg to look for a star vehicle to cast her in, and so Charlie's Angels was born. The series, which also starred Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith (and later spawned two movies with Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu) was a great success and ran for five seasons, though Fawcett left after one, appearing only in occasional episodes thereafter. Her character is remembered partly thanks to a haircut which became a popular fad, making her one of the icons of the 70s. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance.
After Charlie's Angels, Fawcett starred in a number of unsuccessful films, including the notorious Saturn 3 with Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel. Her marriage to Majors was crumbling, eventually to end in divorce. She moved in with actor Ryan O'Neal, with whom she was later to have a child, voice actor Redmond O'Neal, but the relationship was tumultuous and allegedly violent. Fawcett put this experience to use in 1984's The Burning Bed, in which she starred alongside Paul Le Mat and Grace Zabriskie as a battered wife; the performance won her an Emmy. She also won acclaim on Broadway for playing a rape victim in Extremities, which was later filmed. These meatier roles helped Fawcett to gain more control of her career, though she worked mostly on TV movies and gradually began to reappear on the small screen in shows like Ally McBeal, with Calista Flockhart and Greg Germann; Spin City, with Michael J Fox and Charlie Sheen; and The Guardian, with Simon Baker and Dabney Coleman.
In 1997 Fawcett separated from Ryan O'Neal. She subsequently dated director James Orr, who was arrested for injuring her when trying to prevent her from vandalizing his house. She has also been romantically linked to businessman Greg Lott and tennis player Martin Barba. Fawcett now works for charities that aim to tackle domestic violence, as well as continuing her long-term fundraising efforts for the American Cancer Society.
Fawcett's controversial image has been compounded by allegations of drug abuse, though she has always denied having a problem. She also created a sensation when, at the age of forty-eight (and again at fifty), she stripped off to pose for Playboy. She is now the star of her own reality TV show, Chasing Farrah.
YUDDY
