Farrah, pin-up for millions, loses her cancer fight aged 62

Published on Thursday 25 June 2009 23:04

ACTRESS Farrah Fawcett, the Charlie's Angels television star whose big smile and feathered blonde mane made her one of the sex symbols of the 1970s, died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. She was 62.

Fawcett, first vaulted to stardom by an alluring poster of her in a red swimsuit, was diagnosed with cancer in late 2006. It spread to her liver in 2007, proving resistant to treatment in Germany and California.

"After a long and brave battle with cancer, our beloved Farrah has passed away," Fawcett's long-time partner, the actor Ryan O'Neal, said in a statement.

O'Neal was said to have been at her hospital bedside in Los Angeles when she died.

Her publicist, Allen Miller, wrote yesterday on the actress's official website: "I am sorry to say our Farrah has passed to a better place and left the pain and confines of her bed behind."

Fawcett's death came just six weeks after the TV broadcast of a video diary she made chronicling her battle with cancer.

Called Farrah's Story, the documentary was effectively a self-penned obituary. O'Neal said she had wanted to tell her story on her own terms.

Fawcett's close friend, Alana Stewart, said after leaving the hospital yesterday: "I just lost my best friend. Her death was very peaceful."

Fawcett started guest-starring on TV in the late 1960s and appeared on the television hit The Six Million Dollar Man after marrying the show's star, Lee Majors, in 1974. The couple divorced in the early 1980s.

Her career took off thanks to a poster of her posing flirtatiously in a red bathing suit. It sold millions of copies.

In 1976 she was cast in Charlie's Angels, an action show about three beautiful, strong women private detectives.

As the tanned and glamorous Jill Munroe – part of a trio with Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson – Fawcett was the show's most talked-about star. She left Charlie's Angels after only one series, but lawsuit settlements brought her back to guest-star.

Fawcett came to epitomise the glamorous California lifestyle and inspired a craze for blown-out, feathered-back hair.

Fawcett took on more challenging dramas in the 1980s and earned critical acclaim for her performance as a battered wife in The Burning Bed in 1984, for which she received the first of three Emmy nominations.

She had one son with O'Neal. Redmond O'Neal, now 24, was arrested in 2008 and 2009 for drug offences, leading to him spending time in jail.