Farrah Leni Fawcett aka Farrah biography

Real biography: Ask you dad, and he'll tell you he probably had Farrah Fawcett's infamous poster hanging in his room at some point.

Life Story

Forget those Charlie's Angels remakes, as Farrah Fawcett (one of the original three Angels) puts the new cast to shame. Fawcett's career started out slowly. She attended the University of Texas and graduated with a degree in microbiology. While at school, she won a campus beauty contest and was noticed by a talent agent. She moved to Los Angeles and did commercial TV work for a while. Her career didn't take off until she met actor Lee Majors, who at the time, was among the top TV stars. The two became romantically involved and Majors helped Fawcett's career by getting her parts on the series Henry O and in the cult classic film Logan's Run. She was also photographed for what would become one of the best selling posters in history: A simple photograph of Farrah with a wide smile and visible nipples beneath a tight one-piece bathing suit. Producer Aaron Spelling took notice of the young actress and cast her in his new crime show Charlie's Angels, as Jill Munroe. Her sex appeal, and famous hairstyle, helped make the show the most popular thing on TV. But her success may have caused a riff between herself and Majors, who's own career was being eclipsed. Fawcett was unhappy with the light-weight feel of the Angel's scripts, and decided to leave the show in 1977 to work on films. Unfortunately, her choice of films weren't remarkable. Films like Saturn-3 and Sunburn didn't do well at the box-office.

In 1982, she left Majors and fell in love with Ryan O'Neal and throughout the 80's and 90's appeared in countless made-for-TV movies. She also appeared in the films The Apostle, and Dr. T and the Woman (Kate Hudson, Liv Tyler).

In 1997, Fawcett was a guest on a now infamous episode of The Late Show with David Letterman. Fawcett appeared to be drugged and aloof, and rambled about nonsense to a shocked Letterman. Afterwards, Fawcett blamed her odd appearance on the show on her nerves.

Fawcett bounced back, and appeared on TV show such as Alley McBeil (Portia De Rossi, Lucy Liu, Calista Flockhart), Spin City (Heather Locklear) and The Guardian.