Stars bid farewell to Farrah Fawcett
Published 10:13 pm Tuesday, June 30, 2009
LOS ANGELES — The life of “Charlie’s Angels” star Farrah Fawcett was celebrated Tuesday at a private funeral in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
Her longtime companion, Ryan O’Neal, 68, was among pallbearers who accompanied the casket, covered in yellow and orange flowers.
Fawcett’s friend Alana Stewart and “Charlie’s Angels” co-star Kate Jackson were among early arrivals before the hearse pulled up, accompanied by 10 motorcycle officers.
The funeral program said Fawcett’s and O’Neal’s 24-year-old son, Redmond, was to do the service’s first reading. He has been jailed in a drug case but received a judge’s permission to attend the funeral. He was not seen outside the cathedral, however.
The program, which featured a photograph of a smiling Fawcett, also said Ryan O’Neal was to read the 23rd Psalm, and eulogies were to be given by Stewart and Dr. Lawrence Piro, Fawcett’s cancer specialist.
Fawcett died Thursday at age 62 after a public battle with cancer. O’Neal and Stewart were at her side.
Diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006, Fawcett’s battle with the disease was the subject of “Farrah’s Story,” a documentary in which she made public her painful treatments and dispiriting setbacks — from shaving her golden locks before chemotherapy could claim them to undergoing experimental treatments in Germany. The production aired in May on NBC.
Just days before she died, O’Neal said he asked Fawcett to marry him and she agreed. They would wed “as soon as she can say yes,” he said.
Fawcett became a sensation in 1976 as one-third of the crime-fighting trio in “Charlie’s Angels.” A poster of her in a clingy, red swimsuit sold in the millions and her full, layered hairstyle became all the rage, with girls and women across America mimicking the look.
Fawcett — then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors because of her marriage to “The Six Million Dollar Man” star Lee Majors — left the show after the first season.
Turning to more serious movie roles in the 1980s and 1990s, she won praise playing an abused wife in “The Burning Bed,” which earned her an Emmy nomination.
As further proof of her acting credentials, Fawcett appeared off-Broadway in “Extremities,” playing a woman who seeks revenge against her attacker after being raped in her own home. She repeated the role in the 1986 film version.
Not content to continue playing victims, she switched type to take on roles as a murderous mother in the 1989 true-crime story “Small Sacrifices” and a tough lawyer on the trail of a thief in 1992’s “Criminal Behavior.”
