Rise to Fame
The red swimsuit poster made her face ubiquitous before most Americans had seen a single episode of Charlie's Angels. She picked the pose, wore her own swimsuit, did her own hair, and chose a one-piece to cover a childhood scar. Over 12 million copies sold. Her royalties reportedly hit $400,000; her weekly salary on the show was $5,000 an episode. Walking away from Charlie's Angels after one season got her blacklisted by the producers and cost her parts in Coma and Foul Play, but the poster had already made her something those roles couldn't.
In the Spotlight
The pivot from sex symbol to real actor played out on primetime television. The Burning Bed (1984) pulled a 36.2 household share for NBC, the network's highest-rated TV movie at the time, and her performance earned her the first of four Emmy nominations. The critics who had dismissed her as a pretty face spent the next decade adjusting that assessment. Career total: four Emmy nominations, six Golden Globe nominations, none of it for anything she's primarily remembered for. The poster is what everyone pictures. The acting is what she spent her career trying to prove.
Side Notes
A microbiology major at the University of Texas, she switched after a sculpture class with Charles Umlauf and spent the rest of her life making art nobody outside her circle saw. She kept a studio on her Hollywood property for decades, cast bronzes through an Italian foundry, and bequeathed over 100 of her own works, along with Andy Warhols and Umlauf pieces, to the Blanton Museum of Art at UT Austin. She reportedly described the acting as something she did 'so that she could support her art habit.' The collection only went public after she died.
Final Chapter
Alana Stewart, who had co-filmed Farrah's Story with Fawcett, was at her bedside alongside Ryan O'Neal when she died. Michael Jackson died within hours at a hospital less than five miles away, and networks that had been preparing tributes pivoted immediately to his death. The Farrah Fawcett Foundation continued after her death, funding HPV research and clinical trials for anal cancer. Her $4.5 million estate went into a trust for her son Redmond.