Farrah Fawcett dead at 62

Farrah Fawcett died early this morning (9:28 am PST) after a three year battle with cancer.

She was in St. John’s Heath Center in Santa Monica, Calif when she passed away. She was with longtime partner Ryan O’Neal, friend Alana Stewart, friend and hairdresser Mela Murphy and her doctor Lawrence Piro. She had recently returned to St. John’s for treatment of complications from anal cancer, first diagnosed three years ago.

Ryan O’Neal, her long time companion stated “She’s gone. She now belongs to the ages,” he also confirmed that she received the last rites of the Catholic Church. “She’s now with her mother and sister and her God. I loved her with all my heart. I will miss her so very, very much. She was in and out of consciousness. I talked to her all through the night. I told her how very much I loved her. She’s in a better place now. She was with her team when she passed … Her eyes were open, but she didn’t say anything. But you could see in her eyes that she recognized us.”

Just a few days ago there were reports that Ryan and Fawcett had planned to wed before she died however, in the end, there just wasn’t time.

Friends and family plan to honor Fawcett with a funeral service at a Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles in the next few days.

A little background on Farrah Fawcett from People Magazine:

In 1973, Fawcett married actor Lee Majors, forever known as Col. Steve Austin on TV’s The Six Million Dollar Man. Three years later, she appeared in the cult sci-fi film Logan’s Run and began her stint with costars Jackson and Jaclyn Smith on Charlie’s Angels. Well-coiffed and scantily clad, the threesome created an instant sensation, with a weekly following of 23 million fans.

Farrah Fawcett’s 1976 poster Photo by: Pie InternationalFarrah Fawcett Dies of Cancer at 62| Farrah Fawcett, Ryan O’Neal
Fawcett moved on after just one season. By then, she was already a phenomenon, having donned a one-piece red bathing suit and a perfect smile for her legendary pin-up poster, which sold a still-record 12 million copies.

“I became famous almost before I had a craft,” Fawcett told The New York Times in 1986, four years after her divorce from Majors. (By then, she was already involved with Ryan O’Neal.) “I didn’t study drama at school. I was an art major. Suddenly, when I was doing Charlie’s Angels, I was getting all this fan mail, and I didn’t really know why. I don’t think anybody else did, either.”

Bumpy Film Career
Though she left TV for what was assumed to be greener pastures – feature films – Fawcett’s initial three big-screen vehicles all crash-landed. Her first, 1978’s Somebody Killed Her Husband, was lampooned in MAD magazine under the title, Somebody Killed Her Career.

It took some serious dramatic TV roles, including that of a battered wife in 1984’s The Burning Bed (which earned her an Emmy nomination), as well as starring in small-screen biopics about pioneering photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and ill-fated Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, for Fawcett to bounce back.

“What would you do if someone said to you, ‘You’re so popular right now that you can be on the cover of every magazine, but if you do that, you might get overexposed and a backlash will develop’?” Fawcett told The Times after she had emerged from one of the valleys of her career.

Still, she said of fighting for survival in Hollywood, “That’s life. Everything has positive and negative consequences.”

We’ll miss you Farrah.