| BIOGRAPHY
American actress Farrah Fawcett was an art student at the University
of Texas before she deduced that she could make more money posing
for pictures than painting them. A supermodel before that phrase
had fallen into common usage, Fawcett moved from Wella Balsam
shampoo ads into acting, making her first film Myra Breckenridge
in 1970.
She worked in TV bits and full supporting parts, obtaining steady
employment in 1974 with a small recurring role on the cop series
Harry O, but true stardom was still some two years down the road.
In 1976, producer Aaron Spelling cast Fawcett, Kate Jackson and
Jaclyn Smith in a pilot for an adventure series titled Charlie's
Angels. The pilot graduated to a series, and the rest was TV history;
during her Charlie's Angels tenure Fawcett was the most visible
of the three actresses, adorning magazine covers and pin-up posters,
which set sales records. There were even Farrah Fawcett dolls
before the first season of Charlie's Angels was over.
Now in the hands of high-profile agents and advisers, Fawcett
(billed Farrah Fawcett-Majors after her marriage to Lee Majors)
decided she'd outgrown Angels and left the series, even though
she had another year on her contract. While the studio drew up
legal papers to block her move, she was replaced by Cheryl Ladd.
Fawcett settled her dispute by agreeing to a set number of guest
appearances on the program. Some industry cynics suggested that
Fawcett would have problems sustaining her popularity.
Certainly such lukewarm film projects as Sunburn (1979), Somebody
Killed Her Husband (1978) and Saturn 3 (1980) would seem to bear
this theory out. But Fawcett took matters into her own hands and
decided to make her own opportunities--and like many other performers
who strive to be taken seriously, she chose the most extreme,
demanding method of proving her acting mettle. Playing a vengeful
rape victim in both the play and 1986 film version of Extremities
(an apt title) and making a meal of her role as a battered wife
who murders her husband out of self-defense in the TV movie The
Burning Bed (1984), Fawcett confounded her detractors and demonstrated
she was a more-than-capable actress.
Other TV movie appearances of varying quality cast her as everything
from a child killer to a Nazi hunter to famed LIFE photographer
Margaret Bourke-White. Never as big a name as she was in 1976,
Fawcett has nonetheless affirmed her reputation as an actress
of importance. Her fans were even willing to forgive her misbegotten
fling at situation comedy in the 1991 series Good Sports, in which
she co-starred with her longtime "significant other"
Ryan O'Neal.
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FILMOGRAPHY
• The Cookout (2004)
• Silk Hope (2003)
• Jewel (2001)
• Dr. T and the Women (2000)
• The Apostle (1997)
• The Lovemaster (1996)
• Man of the House (1995)
• The Substitute Wife (1994)
• Between Two Women (1992)
• See You in the Morning (1989)
• Small Sacrifices (1989)
• Poor Little Rich Girl - The Barbara Hutton Story (1987)
• Extremities (1986)
• The Burning Bed (1984)
• Cannonball Run (1981)
• Murder in Texas (1981)
• Saturn 3 (1979)
• Sunburn (1979)
• Logan's Run (1976)
• Murder on Flight 502 (1975)
• Myra Breckenridge (1970)
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