Actress’ early fame eclipsed her talent

LOS ANGELES —- Farrah Fawcett, who soared to fame as a national sex symbol in the late 1970s on television’s campy “Charlie’s Angels” and in a swimsuit poster that showcased her feathery mane and made her a generation’s favorite pinup, died Thursday. She was 62.

Fawcett, whose celebrity overshadowed her ability as a serious actress and was diagnosed with a rare anal cancer in 2006, died about 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Health Center in nearby Santa Monica, said Paul Bloch, her publicist.

Three months after she was declared cancer-free in 2007, doctors at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center told her the cancer had returned, spreading to her liver.

As an actress, Fawcett was initially dismissed for her role as Jill Munroe in “Charlie’s Angels,” one of the “jiggle” series on ABC-TV in the late 1970s.

But she transformed her career and some popular perceptions in 1984 with “The Burning Bed,” a television movie about a battered wife that brought her the first of three Emmy nominations.

For many, the poster of her wearing a wet one-piece swimsuit and a blinding smile endured.

“If you were to list 10 images that are evocative of American pop culture, Farrah Fawcett would be one of them,” Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, told the Los Angeles Times. “That poster became one of the defining images of the 1970s.”

Yet Fawcett was part of a new generation of celebrities whose fame was fueled by heightened coverage of their ongoing personal dramas, Thompson said.

She had many: a failed marriage to actor Lee Majors; a stormy, long-term relationship with actor Ryan O’Neal; a son who fought drug addiction; a writer-director boyfriend, James Orr, who was convicted of assaulting her; a Playboy video that featured her using her naked body as a paintbrush; and a spacey 1997 appearance on David Letterman’s late-night TV show that caused critics to question her mental state.

At first, her mane nearly eclipsed her fame.

“Charlie’s Angels” showcased the long, feathered tresses that framed her face, launching a national fad of copycat haircuts.

Within six months, the poster sold 5 million copies, outstripping the records of such previous sex symbols as Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe.

It wound up selling a reported 12 million copies.

Fawcett quit the series that brought her initial fame in 1977 after a single season, saying producers were preventing her from growing as an actress.

With Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, Fawcett had played a private investigator whose main talent seemed to be the ability to wield a gun while going braless and shouting, “Freeze, turkey!”

“In an odd way, even with all that Lycra and bralessness, the show was a feminist statement,” Thompson said. “This was an hour-long drama with women as action heroes. They were working in areas of power that generally we didn’t see women in much.”

Fawcett, who had appeared in shampoo ads, would triumph over critics who dismissed “Charlie’s Angels” as little more than a commercial for hair products.

But first she appeared in two lightweight feature films: “Somebody Killed Her Husband” (1978) and “Sunburn” (1979).

She surprised critics with her intense portrayal of the battered wife who immolates her husband in the TV movie “The Burning Bed.”

The 1984 Times review noted her “growing acting skill” and “deeply moving performance.”

The off-Broadway play “Extremities” provided another taxing showcase in 1983.

Fawcett broke her wrist during a fight scene and lost weight because the part was so physically demanding.

She also earned respectable reviews.

When the film of “Extremities” followed in 1986, the Times’ Charles Champlin called her performance “further declaration of her arrival as a serious and intelligent actress who happens to be beautiful.”

The 1976 pin-up poster of Farrah Fawcett came to define an era.