Original subtitles

-She's the stunning Texas beauty who takes Hollywood by storm.

-Farrah Fawcett was probably

the world's most famous sex symbol.

-When she smiled at you, that was devastating to people.

You couldn't stop thinking about her.

-It wasn't just her beauty.

It was just the whole package.

-A legendary poster would make her famous.

-She came to the bedroom door in the red suit, and I said,

"Yeah, I think this could be good."

-"Charlie's Angels" would make her a star.

-Here comes this show of three young women

who don't seem to own any undergarments chasing killers.

-Was it jiggle TV? Yeah.

By the same token, "Charlie's Angels"

has three women kicking ass and taking names.

-But she risks it all when she walks away from the hit show.

-I wanted the shows to be about something.

-She followed her own path,

and she took a lot of grief for it.

-After marriage to Lee Majors, she bounces back

with a passionate romance with Ryan O'Neal.

-Before there was Brad and Angie,

there was Farrah and Ryan.

-They were very much in love, fiery as well.

-Determined to prove she is more than a pretty blonde,

she takes another risk in her career.

-She decides to do Off-Broadway.

-People were totally knocked out.

-I remember thinking, "I'll never do anything

this powerful again."

-But no amount of professional succeeds could prepare her

for a devastating personal diagnosis.

-Farrah was so shocked to be diagnosed with cancer.

-Her whole world was coming apart.

-Farrah fought for every last second of life.

-We take a look at the life and legacy of the original angel

and poster girl next door, the actress...

-I would like to be very successful in films,

hopefully being taken seriously. -... the artist...

-She never felt more like herself

than when she was just wearing a t-shirt

and had her hands in a bunch of clay.

-...the icon.

-She decided to be a boss when men were running Hollywood.

-What's interesting is that everything's unpredictable.

♪♪

-This is "Farrah Fawcett: Behind Closed Doors."

Hello and welcome to "Behind Closed Doors."

I'm Natalie Morales.

Farrah Fawcett is an all-American icon

known for her looks and girl next door attitude.

In a 1980s TV commercial for the American Cancer Society,

a young, glowing Farrah says,

"When you've got health, you've got it all."

Well, decades later the world would be shocked to learn

the original Charlie's Angel has a rare form of cancer.

From the unexpected moves she makes in her career

to the men she gives her heart to,

Farrah admits her life is full of contradictions.

Toward the end of her career, the sexy and alluring pinup girl

wants to remembered for one thing -- surviving.

But three years after being diagnosed,

her story of survival comes to a painful end.

-Farrah Fawcett's private battle

with cancer becomes very public.

The actress has been struggling with her illness

since being diagnosed in 2006.

-Ryan called me and said,

"If you want to see Farrah,

you've got to come now."

She was so beautiful and so beautiful in death

with her little short hair and just, you know, so peaceful.

♪♪

It's hard to lose a friend like that.

-We were all holding her hand

and, you know, telling her we loved her,

and she just looked so, so peaceful.

-And then all the machines flatlined, and she was...

She was gone.

-Actress and icon Farrah Fawcett died

this morning after a long battle with cancer.

-I was getting ready to board a plane and saw on the screen

that my aunt took a turn for the worse,

and by the time I had landed, you know, she had passed away.

-We didn't think anyone even knew she was in the hospital,

and there were a hundred paparazzi all over,

hiding in the trees, in the bushes, whatever,

and the minute we walked out,

they somehow knew.

-I just couldn't believe it,

and actually I thought it wasn't true.

That's just -- The tabloids and the entertainment shows,

they were just saying that she had passed away

and that that really didn't happen

because I just didn't want to believe it.

-Actress Farrah Fawcett... -The actress who became famous

as one of Charlie's Angels died today at the age of 62.

-We understand, of course, Ryan O'Neal was at her side.

He came out here earlier. -Is she okay?

-How's she doing? -Farrah is gone.

-Oh, my god. -She's gone, Ryan?

-She's gone.

-The morning that Farrah passed away,

I was being interviewed,

and somebody went outside and turned on their phone

and said, "We need to leave.

Michael Jackson is dying."

-I was being interviewed about her death,

and I was emotional and talking about it.

In the middle of the interview, the crew says,

"Sorry. We got to go. Michael Jackson just died."

-"Los Angeles Times" saying Michael Jackson has died,

50 years old.

-His death will surely be seen

as one of those iconic moments in American life.

-The fact that Farrah died on the same day

that Michael Jackson died

sent her obituary to the inside pages of the newspapers.

What happened in the process was that a lot of people

were never reminded of the impact

she made culturally on this society.

-I felt that completely overshadowed the day

that she died,

that there was so much press on him

and that we didn't get to see what she did

and the person that she was,

but I talked with friends of hers,

and we talked about this at the funeral,

that she probably wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

-What do you think Farrah would've thought?

In some ways, she almost had second billing.

-The bane of her existence were tabloids and gossip

and the negative press when they hounded her,

and I think she would've sort of in a way gone,

"Thank God, somebody else is taking the heat."

-She would say, "Wouldn't you know

that Michael Jackson and I would die the same day?"

But I think having all the attention

go to Michael Jackson was really a blessing because

she always wanted that privacy.

-Women, of course, idolized Farrah.

They wanted to be her.

They imitated her. They had her hair.

Men loved her.

What was it about Farrah?

-She just had something very special about her,

special presence.

She was beautiful, but it wasn't just her beauty, you know?

She was sexy in a sort of all-American girl kind of way,

but she had a great sense of humor.

It was her smile.

I think it was just the whole package.

-She was one of those people who was constantly talked about,

everything she did, everything she didn't do.

-Farrah is an icon, you know?

She's one of the very few celebrities

who only needs a first name.

There's only one Farrah.

-It's not her talent. It's not her acting skill.

It's her ability to be alive,

to be joyful, to flirt,

to embrace this life that she had.

You want to be a part of that.

-This was the girl next door that we loved,

that was really sexy, that was funny,

but somebody we really rooted for.

I think her impact, certainly on American pop culture,

cannot be overestimated.

♪♪

-Farrah Leni Fawcett has a humble

beginning in Corpus Christi, Texas,

born February 2, 1947, to homemaker Pauline Fawcett

and oil-field contractor James Fawcett.

The blonde beauty grows up with sister, Diane,

in a close-knit Catholic family.

-It certainly wasn't luxurious.

My grandfather worked tons.

He didn't make a lot of money but did the best they could.

-Her dad was, like, a John Wayne type.

He helped shape her to be really tough

and not to take any BS.

-Her family was everything to her.

She called him Daddy, and Pauline...

Everybody called her Pauly.

-To know why Farrah Fawcett is so beautiful

you'd only look at her mother, Pauline Fawcett,

and you see where heredity and genetics come to play.

You're very lucky, Farrah, to have that mother.

-Mrs. Fawcett, where did you get the name Farrah?

-I just made it up.

I came up with it, and it's Farrah Leni, L-E-N-I.

-At what point did you realize

that your looks would set you apart, would take you places?

-Kindergarten.

I wanted very much to not be looked at

or not be separated from,

like I told you, the norm.

-But you were. -I was, yes.

-At an early age, Farrah realizes

the attention she receives for her beauty is not all good.

-When I was going to a Catholic school in the first grade,

it was about three blocks away,

and I walked to school, and I walked home.

It was by this huge cotton field,

and on the way home, my very first day of school,

a high school boy, we suspect, was there and said,

"You want some candy? Come with me,"

and I said, "No, no," you know?

"Don't talk to strangers," mother had told me,

and he tried pulling me into this field

of which I just was hysterical,

threw my books down, ran away, scraped my knee.

He tried to pull my panties down, you know?

It was a terrible experience.

I don't remember too much about it,

but that did happen so that, I mean,

from the first grade literally until college,

I never walked to school or went to school by myself.

It freaked my mother out so much,

and she felt so responsible,

and the police were saying, "Now what did he say to you?"

And I can only remember, you know,

terrible things that he said which I can't repeat,

but that was a pretty horrific experience

when I was so young, you know?

-At 7? -Mm-hmm, 7.

-She liked to have the family around her a lot.

She liked a close circle of people around her,

and she was, I would say, like, fiercely

wanting to have people she could trust around her.

-Her mother, when she would take her to the grocery store

and put her in the little cart and push her around,

other mothers would come up and say,

"Your daughter is an A-N-G-E-L.

She's an angel," and people even then

when she was a little girl could not stop staring at her.

And Farrah once told me that she didn't like fame

because everybody kept staring at her.

-I still don't like walking into a room

and having people turn and look, you know?

I'd rather sneak in, sort of observe,

gradually, you know, start talking to people,

so I don't think I've ever really gotten used to that.

-In high school, Farrah wins the title

of most beautiful student every year.

-She was a big deal in high school.

At a very young age, she had a presence.

-There's certain people that have it.

Whatever it is, she had.

I mean, just the smile, the sweetness, just different

from just about anyone else you'd ever meet.

Word spread throughout

the University of Texas at Austin

when Farrah arrives to campus with her mom in 1965.

-Yeah. -I took her to school

the first day of college, and she made me stay a week

in the little room with her and my little dog.

-When I first went to school, my dad, to college, you know,

he said, "Concentrate and really,

you know, work hard,"

and my mom said, "Have fun.

Have fun," you know?

-It's hard to explain because as gorgeous as she was,

she was so natural and sweet,

and so you just liked her.

She was easy to like.

-So the prettiest and wealthiest young women

that came to UT joined sororities,

and the Tri Deltas immediately took one look at Farrah

and said, "We want you,"

and there's this tradition back then.

-Pledge night, all the pledges go out

in front of their sorority houses,

and all the boys come and check them out.

-We have to remember this was a very different era, right?

The Tri Delts would actually be lined up

to be viewed by the men.

-And anyone that makes a good impression on the guy,

he can stand in line to ask her out on a date,

and Farrah was at the end,

and the line of guys went out the yard,

through the gate and around the block literally.

♪♪

-I was asking, I mean, how did all these guys know about her

because it was the beginning of the year,

but I think that from high school,

her legend followed her.

-You had to book a date with her,

you know, weeks in advance, if not months.

-I don't know what that was about.

Blonde, I don't know? Yeah, that was...

That I really didn't understand,

sort of the dating thing,

the sorority, fraternity,

and all that emphasis on dating and guys lined up.

-She really did have a date for every breakfast,

lunch, and dinner,

and she really did have people who carried her books around.

I think a lot of that had to do with her absolute magnetism.

-She was always ahead of her time,

always wearing clothes before anybody else was.

By the time they were doing it, she was changing.

She wore those little short cowboy boots

with her little short skirts.

She was edgy and pushed things a little bit.

-I've got all these pictures, and she just stands out.

She's always really tan and has this amazing smile

and always seems happy.

-According to journalist Skip Hollandsworth,

she was a free spirit.

-She took off her shoes at dances and danced barefoot

at the parties, which nobody had seen before.

She showed up for class wearing short cutoff jean shorts,

which no one had seen before.

She took art classes.

She did female sculptures of nudes.

She had this kind of independence.

It might've been a kind of sexuality

that people didn't understand at that time,

but she wasn't overtly sexual.

-Farrah's freshman year she's named one

of the 10 most beautiful women in the college yearbook.

-It was an unheard of honor for her

to get named to that position.

It always went to the seniors, the great beauties

who had been around UT for four years.

She made it her freshman year,

and that caught the eye of a talent scout,

and he began to call her.

-He saw my photograph,

and he started calling my freshman year,

so it became a big deal -- Hollywood.

You know, he'd always say,

"It's David Mirisch from Hollywood," not Los Angeles,

so it became kind of a joke.

I mean, you know, Hollywood is calling again,

and for the first year, I didn't pay any attention to it.

"Oh, yeah. That'd be nice. Thank you,"

and, you know, but he was persistent.

He kept calling and calling.

-The publicist tries to convince the beautiful coed

to come to Hollywood, but Farrah turns his offer down

and embraces college life in Austin

where she first majors in microbiology

but finds her calling in the art department.

She changes her major and begins studying with artist

and sculptor Charles Umlauf.

-And then that's what it was all about for me, art.

-She was studying under Umlauf

who was her mentor and, I think, she was his muse.

She quickly learned that art was what she loved.

-She was a really good artist,

and so she excelled in his classes,

but when she gets to the sculpture,

she nails it.

-By Farrah's junior year,

the Hollywood publicist is still in pursuit.

-He was determined that he was going to represent her.

He called every day

and sometimes several times a day,

and then he called her parents.

-Finally in 1968, just after her junior year,

Farrah convinces her parents to let her

try her luck in Hollywood.

-I wasn't doing anything for the summer,

and I think my boyfriend was going to Europe,

and so I decided to go out for the summer

but always with the thought that I would go back to college.

-Farrah is a free spirit. You couldn't tell her no.

You were better off just letting her figure it out,

so if she wanted to go, she was going to go.

-She had no acting skills, nothing,

but she decided to take her destiny in her own hands.

-And so the 21-year-old beauty chooses to take a risk

leaving Texas behind for a shot at Hollywood.

♪♪

♪♪

-Welcome back to "Farrah Fawcett:

Behind Closed Doors"

where friends and family give us an inside look at the life

and legacy of this girl next door

turned pop culture icon.

It's the summer of 1968, a tumultuous time in America,

and amid the upheaval, a relatively unknown Farrah

leaves college in Texas

to pursue a career as an actress.

With no training and no experience,

the 21-year-old art student takes a shot at Hollywood.

♪♪

-Her dad moved her out there and moved her into the YWCA.

-We took her out in July, and she says,

"Well, I'm going to try it, and if it don't work,

I'll be back home in September."

- They wouldn't even let Daddy take the luggage up,

so Daddy felt pretty confident

that since they wouldn't let a man, her father,

in to take her luggage up.

But his last words to the publicist was,

"And if anything happens to my daughter,

be sure I'm going to kill you."

♪♪

-But of course she becomes the object of fascination

among young Hollywood men out there,

including a young star named Lee majors.

-If John Wayne had been, sort of,

shrunk down to TV star size, he'd be Lee Majors.

You're talking about a swaggering, macho,

athletic guy, a man's man.

-Once met him, I mean,

he's the only person that I dated out here.

I'm very shy, and so when he picked me up

and we got in the car, I think, you know,

I definitely was intimidated and obviously then more shy,

and he was then extremely shy,

so we just rode in silence.

-Within weeks of arriving to California,

Farrah signs a contract with Columbia Pictures.

She lands bit parts in TV shows and films and stars

in a variety of commercials.

-My parents just thought, "This is just such a ridiculous

amount of money. What are you doing?"

-As Farrah fashions a new life in Hollywood,

she abandons her plan to return to college.

-One day, Lee said to me,

"Farrah and I are engaged and wonder

if you would photograph an engagement photograph,"

so I took these photos of them very posed, Victorian style.

Shortly after that, they decided to get married,

and Lee said to me if I would photograph their wedding,

he would give me exclusive rights

to sell the wedding photos.

They said, "Oh, we're going to get married in the garden

of the Bel-Air Hotel. It's very top secret."

Well, I showed up early,

and there were already paparazzi in the trees.

I mean, there were telephoto lenses coming out of the bushes.

-I was ringbearer in her and Lee Majors' wedding,

so it was really cool because Lee Majors

was the Six Million Dollar Man.

I mean, Farrah was my aunt,

but now I was going to have this guy

who could beat up Bigfoot and jump over trains.

-So she became Farrah Fawcett Majors,

and she tried to be the perfect little wife.

She believed in the idea of being a homemaker,

of being someone who stood by her man and was his support.

♪♪

-Farrah's career gets a boost from guest appearances

on her husband's popular

"Six Million Dollar Man" series, and in the mid-1970s,

Farrah lands two more gigs that will prove life changing.

♪♪

First, a role in a pilot for a new Aaron Spelling show

about three female detectives.

The second, a photo shoot that will result

in one of the most iconic posters ever.

-I got a telephone call out of the blue

from a man back in Ohio,

and he said he had a contract

to photograph Farrah Fawcett for a poster.

We arranged to do it at their home.

It was just myself and Farrah.

Farrah was doing her hair and doing her makeup,

and I walked around and picked locations,

and she came out in a one-piece white suit,

and we went down and started photographing.

-After shooting rolls of film, McBroom and Farrah

aren't convinced they have the perfect shot.

-And I said, "You know, Farrah,

the publisher said that he wants you in a bikini,"

and she said, "Well, I don't like bikinis,

but I have other suits that you'll really like."

And she came to the bedroom door in the red suit,

and she said, "Is this anything?"

And I said, "Uh, yeah. I think this is --

I think this could be good."

In my truck I had an old Mexican blanket, and sure enough,

the blanket happened to have the same color as her suit,

and I said, "Let's go to the tennis court.

We'll take some pictures,

and toward the end of that roll,

I just stopped, and I said, "Farrah, we've got it."

♪♪

-That poster took off.

It sold 12 million copies,

and teenagers, including myself at that time,

put that poster on the bedroom wall.

-Every male human being in the world

seemed to have purchase a copy

or knew of someone who had that photo.

-I mean, you're talking about a gorgeous girl

who's clearly braless just hanging out in what could be,

like, somebody's rec room.

It was sunkissed California natural beauty,

and that became emblematic

of the look of the '70s.

-I remember playing in a tennis tournament with her.

Right during that time, outside the clubhouse there were,

like, hundreds of screaming girls,

and she was kind of overwhelmed by it.

I mean, it happened so quickly.

-Farrah's image makes a lasting imprint on pop culture,

appearing everywhere from "Saturday Night Fever"

to "Saturday Night Live."

-Boy, oh, boy. I am so mad

at Farrah Fawcett Majors.

She's so conceited.

She has never called me once.

[ Laughter ]

-The Farrah pinup is

the best-selling poster of all time,

and that Aaron Spelling detective pilot,

"Charlie's Angels,"

premiers as a hit series on ABC in September 1976.

-Here comes this show of three young women

who don't seem to own any undergarments chasing killers.

♪♪

People flocked to the show.

It was our form of relaxation,

and we were sort of hypnotized by Farrah.

-This was TV time. This was before the Internet.

There wasn't so many different flavors.

There were hit TV shows,

and they were everybody's favorite,

and you could think of very, very few icons

who made it to being on people's walls.

♪♪

-Word of mouth was the only social media that existed,

and so for Farrah's level of fame to go viral in a sense

required you telling your buddy, telling your friend,

telling your sister, telling her best friend, telling your mom.

It really required, in a sense,

the whole nation talking about you.

-Farrah's female-driven show is the first of its kind,

but some critics call the show "family-style porn"

and "jiggle TV."

-Women were burning their bras to make a political statement.

-Mm-hmm.

-You were taking yours off to make...

-Let them burn it. They burned it.

-...jiggle TV.

-No. I just never wore one.

I don't like the straps pressing down.

I'm not sure I really see the point even today.

I never wore one.

-"Charlie's Angels" gave with one hand

while taking away with the other,

so was it jiggle TV?

Yeah, because everybody was jiggling.

By the same token, "Charlie's Angels,"

make no mistake, had three women as the lead of that show

and three women who were firing guns

and karate chopping people and kicking ass

and taking names, so baby steps, you know?

You have to take the good with the bad.

They were objectified.

They were sex symbols,

but they were also sex symbols who were in charge.

-With the commercial success of "Charlie's Angels,"

Farrah's poster sales and her star power explode.

-I remember seeing hair spray and shampoo

and conditioner with her picture on it,

and a Farrah Fawcett pillow, Farrah Fawcett bracelet.

-So one day, she's Farrah,

and then the next day she is this icon

that people still identify with and still talk about the hair.

-Farrah's hair becomes iconic

and is copied by millions of women around the world.

-It came across like she had

to do nothing in order to look great.

She introduced that kind of a look.

-The "New York Times" of all people,

the "New York Times," said it was probably

the most famous hairstyle in all of human history.

-But behind closed doors, life is far from perfect

for the breakout star of "Charlie's Angels."

-I don't think I was quite prepared

for the demands that it took day after day after day.

There was no down time, you know?

You finish a show and then start wardrobing for the next show

at 10 or 11:00 at night

when you haven't really even read the script.

So I think that I became

just overwhelmed by that.

-Farrah's newfound fame also takes a toll on her marriage.

-She's told me this that, you know,

Lee really wanted her to be at home

and a, you know, housewife and everything.

-It's difficult for actors who live together or are married

and both have strong careers going at the same time.

♪♪

♪♪

-"Charlie's Angels" is a breakout

television series in 1976,

and with fans returning week after week

to watch the first-of-its-kind

female cast,

the Angels quickly become a cultural phenomenon,

but for the franchise's most widely known star,

the work is far from angelic.

-I didn't feel that they appreciated being picked up

at 4:45, getting there at 6,

leaving, sometimes, fishing work at 9 or 10,

having to do a wardrobe fitting for the next show,

of which you've just been handed the script.

It didn't seem, to me, the way things should be.

-Having initially been made famous by her looks,

Farrah grows tired of only being seen as a sex symbol

and wants more depth in the storyline.

-I'd gone about as far as I could with the character

unless they started going in a direction

more about the girls,

you know, maybe taking a visit, going home,

having some problems.

They didn't feel the same, you know, the producers,

so it was just, I think, creative differences.

-I wanted the shows to be about something.

We could look the way we looked.

Their comeback was, "We have a formula.

It works. Let's not mess with it."

Mine was, "We have a formula. It works.

Let's go that extra step."

-As the cast and crew continues to film the series,

behind the scenes,

Farrah is fighting to change the terms of her contract.

-I had done the poster already, so I had 10% of that,

and I knew because of the poster,

there was going to be a "Charlie's Angels" poster,

a mug, a whatever, a t-shirt, everything,

so they offered 2 1/2%, and I said, "No."

They said, "The other girls said, 'Yes,'"

and I said, "No."

So they kept coming back, the eighth show,

the 10th show, the 12th show, and I think I said,

"I'm from Texas. I don't like to negotiate."

It's a -- I don't like it,

that, "I'm not going to change my mind."

-She had never signed her contract

because she had never agreed to all the points in the contract,

and a great deal of that hung on merchandising.

She was a lot more savvy to what having a significant piece

of your own face and name could mean.

-So for the whole 22 episodes, I kept saying,

"But I haven't signed my contract."

I think they just were used to people doing what they said

and not really believing that I say what I mean,

and I mean what I say, so it was time to move on.

-She was not satisfied to make her mark on her beauty alone.

I mean, she quit "Charlie's Angels"

after 22 shows saying

that the producers were not letting her grow as an actress.

-And her kind of going her own way shows you

that she didn't want to be held down.

She wanted to make her own decisions.

She wanted to be in control of her career.

I mean, that's, for a lack of a better term, pretty ballsy.

-There was no bigger producer in Hollywood than

Aaron Spelling.

He had "Charlie's Angels." He had "Love Boat."

He had "Fantasy Island."

He was practically programming all of ABC at that point,

and "Charlie's Angels" ended the first season

as the fifth highest rated show on TV,

and he didn't want to mess with success there,

and as a result, it became litigious.

-Spelling-Goldberg Productions files suit against Farrah

claiming breach of contract.

Following two weeks of trial,

the lawsuit is settled out of court.

Farrah can leave the show, but there is a catch.

-The resulting settlement was that she had to make

six guest appearances on the third

and fourth seasons of "Charlie's Angels,"

which she fulfilled.

-I think the settlement was something like she was paid

a very, very nice sum of money

for each of the episodes she had to appear in.

-At the very end, the settlement,

we had to sign papers that we would not say

what the settlement was

because when she came back to "Charlie's Angels,"

they didn't want the other girls to know what she was making

because they were making somewhere around $10,000

or less an episode,

and Farrah was getting $150,000 per episode,

but we went through, you know,

a lot of hell to get to the end of it.

She was blacklisted in Hollywood because no one would hire her,

or they'd be party to a lawsuit.

-Farrah messed with the big boys,

and she messed with their money,

and that's very hard to do and get away with,

and I think back then, it was probably even harder.

-Word spreads in the industry

that there might be legal problems

for anyone who employs Farrah.

-For her to get blackballed

and then come out and fight that contract,

it's amazing, kind of like a pioneer

and pushing forward and saying, "I'm not going to take this.

You're going to fight me on this contract,

and you're going to keep me from projects,

but I'm going to move forward and take,

find roles that are good for me."

-She had just left "Charlie's Angels."

Did she tell you what she was looking for?

What was it she wanted to do with her life, at that point?

-I don't know if she had a real plan, at that point, you know?

Because of everything that had happened,

a lot of people didn't want to use her

because she left "Charlie's Angels."

So she went through a period

that was kind of like a dry period.

-If somebody had said to me,

"These are the steps that are going to happen.

"You'll be sued. You'll be this.

You can't work," would it have changed anything?

Probably not.

I sort of think things happen for a reason.

I went on, and I did something else.

-"Somebody Killed Her Husband,"

Farrah's first movie as a star, is a box office bust in 1978.

Critics sarcastically call the film,

"Somebody killed her career."

Farrah's next two films,

"Sunburn" and "Saturn 3" also flop,

and many critics write Farrah off.

-Farrah Fawcett, She suffered, of course,

at the hands of critics in her recent feature film appearances.

-I think there was fair criticism,

certainly, and I think that there was unfair criticism.

I think sometimes when I read the criticism,

it sounds like I not only acted in the films,

but that I produced them, and I directed them,

and I thought, "Wait. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. There were other people involved."

I think a little bit of it has been unfair.

-She hadn't acted a whole lot up until then,

so when you're known for being beautiful,

it's really hard to convince people

that you're a good actress because they're too busy saying,

"Wow. She looks good in that outfit,"

or "Whoa. Look at that."

The odds are stacked against her

that she'd be able to get past that.

-It's not only my films, you know?

It's everything I do, I take a lot of verbal abusive for.

I think that now, I've just grown to accept it,

so this is the way it is for me, and I just have to accept it,

and I think I improve with every film.

-While she tries to pick up the pieces of her career,

her marriage to Lee Majors is falling apart,

and when Lee invites actor

Ryan O'Neal to their house for dinner,

the fractured romance takes an unexpected turn.

-Ryan was somebody who knew how to charm and disarm

and really woo women,

and the proof was in the number of high-profile relationships

he had had, all with very beautiful women,

some of whom he married,

some of whom he had children with,

and he clearly was ready to move onto his next conquest.

-In an interview with Ireland's "The Late Late Show,"

Ryan explains the moment

he first laid eyes on his friend's wife.

-And there she was in the driveway.

My god, she was breathtaking. I mean, "Who's that?"

He said, "That's my wife."

-Weeks later, Lee heads out of Hollywood for work,

and he asks his friend, Ryan, to check in on Farrah.

-Ryan loved to talk about it.

I do know that Lee asked him, Ryan, to take care of Farrah,

which maybe wasn't such a good idea

because it was instant attraction.

-Be careful what you wish for because, yeah,

Ryan checked in on her, all right,

and the rest is somewhat history.

-Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett divorce.

-Maybe I took some pressure off the judge

because I made the decision to give her the house

because she deserves it.

She deserves it.

She's a nice lady, and I still love her very much.

-I think my life is filled with contradictions,

but there comes a time when you grow up.

You start making your own decisions.

However, I think that we got married

because my parents were constantly, you know,

on my case about not being married and living together.

-By now, she was in the arms of Ryan O'Neal.

-Before there was Brad and Angie,

before there was Brad and Jen, there was Farrah and Ryan

doing all sorts of things that kind of ensured

they would stay in the headlines,

first and foremost, not getting married.

That kept everybody watching them and wondering,

"Are they going to get engaged? Are they going to get married?"

and they were a real source of fascination.

-You called them the Golden Couple then, right?

-They really were.

They would walk into a room or to a party,

and the room would almost get quiet

because they were just so spectacular together.

I mean, they weren't just, you know, like, Ken and Barbie.

I mean, he would tell his funny stories, and she would chime in,

and they'd disagree over something.

-They were very much in love, like,

all over each other, very passionate couple,

I would say, fiery as well.

-It was a big change.

You know, Ryan having children, Tatum and Griffin and Patrick.

I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces, right there,

so there's just a lot, a lot going on.

-Farrah finds a new partner in Ryan,

but her career is struggling.

So the beautiful pinup girl takes a risk no one expected.

-I would like to be very successful in films,

hopefully being taken seriously as a dramatic actress.

♪♪

♪♪

-Welcome back to

"Farrah Fawcett: Behind Closed Doors."

The success of both "Charlie's Angels"

and her famous poster launches Farrah Fawcett,

but when the star abruptly leaves her hit show,

her career suffers,

and she lands in a string of movie flops.

Wanting to be known as a serious actress,

Farrah returns to television in 1981,

playing a wife believed to have been murdered by her husband.

-She'd always be offered these fluffy roles,

and then she did "Murder In Texas,"

which was the TV or the movie of the week,

and that was the first time she played a,

you know, a serious television role.

-That role was a little more demanding,

a little more serious.

In fact, before that, I had chosen to not do

a lot of the scripts that were sent to me

because they just perpetuated

the same character that I had played,

just a different version of a pretty girl.

-Farrah next sets her eyes on a gritty unglamorous role

in New York City's off-Broadway play "Extremities."

-Originally, Susan Sarandon was in it,

and Susan's time in it was running out,

and so a lot of thought went into

who would be able to do a very strenuous role,

a very dramatic role.

-The role is of a woman who escapes from

and then tortures a serial rapist.

The play includes graphic scenes

that explore the horrors of rape and revenge.

-And I have to be honest.

Farrah's name never came to mind until one night,

I got a phone call from Farrah's agent,

and she said, "Hey, Bob.

"Did you ever think of Farrah Fawcett

to replace Susan?"

My first reaction was, "That's crazy.

"How could we entrust this role to the blonde girl

from 'Charlie's Angels'?"

-The agent convinces Ackerman to at least meet Farrah

before saying, "No."

-She showed up with Ryan O'Neal.

We didn't fly her in.

She flew herself from LA to New York,

and she met me at the theater,

and we worked together for

I would say probably two or three hours.

I was instantly moved by her.

There was this passion inside of her

to prove that she could do it.

-The creativity of the work itself

is what was important to me,

and I saw a chance to take

a character and go with it.

-Farrah earns the part

and though she has no formal stage training,

prepares for her 1983 New York stage debut.

-Only about two or three weeks rehearsal

before she had to go on.

It's very risky move for any actor who has not been onstage

to suddenly go from doing film work

to acting in front of a live audience.

-A risky move for sure,

but according to those who knew Farrah,

that was the way the Texas beauty lived her life.

-She lived by the statement that,

"Life is sweetened by risk." What did she mean by that?

-She loved taking risks.

She loved doing things that people

wouldn't expect her to do.

She'd never done theater,

and she wanted to go to a different level in her career.

-It was extraordinary to see what happened.

All of the critics showed up for her opening night,

and she wowed everybody.

-I did not know she even had that in her.

It was night after night, she was up there fighting.

-And that was the greatest I ever saw in my life.

I remember hearing people say,

"I would never have dreamed that's Farrah Fawcett."

-In a fight scene, Farrah breaks her wrist

and is forced to end her

off-Broadway run after three months,

but the impact of the theater experience on her career

is longer lasting.

-Her role in "Extremities" changed the perception of her,

and the project that she most wanted to do, "The Burning Bed,"

which she could never get anybody to take seriously,

especially with her playing the lead role, happened.

-Based on a true story, "The Burning Bed"

is a TV movie about an abused wife

who reaches her breaking point and kills her husband.

-The very fact that she wanted to do that movie, to me,

spoke an enormous amount about her interests

and her commitment to break out of any kind of

narrow definition

of who she was and what she could do.

-Farrah embraces the gritty role,

appearing decidedly unglamorous.

-It was a role that no one

would have ever read that script, probably, and said,

"Oh, Farrah Fawcett for that role,"

but she fought for that role.

She wanted it. -There was a big debate.

Were people going to tune in to see her in something

where she didn't look blonde and cute?

And experts said, "It could go either way."

It could be a big flop, or it could be a huge ratings success.

-"The Burning Bed" airs October 8th, 1984

and at the time, is NBC's highest-rated

made-for-TV movie ever.

Farrah is nominated for both a Golden Globe and Emmy Award.

-It made Hollywood take her seriously,

and she became very, very sought out

for miniseries and movies of the week.

-I remember thinking,

"I'll never do anything this powerful again," you know?

"I've done it."

-Soon after "The Burning Bed" aired, Farrah,

myself, and the producers received letters and phone calls

from people who were using the film

to help legislation get passed.

Back then, there was still very much of an onus

that it was the woman's fault,

and so the film began to have a real impact in the culture

and in specific policies

and ways that abused women were being treated.

-While filming "The Burning Bed,"

37-year-old Farrah

finds out she's about to take on one of her life's biggest roles.

-Are you expecting a child? -Mm-hmm.

-That's very nice. Aren't you happy about that?

-Mm-hmm. -All right.

-Haven't had too much time to think about it, you know?

Of course I'm happy.

-Are you going to marry Ryan O'Neal?

-I don't know.

-After four years together and with a child on the way,

many wonder if the couple will announce plans to marry.

-I'm independent.

I'm secure.

I don't need a piece of paper to say that I'm going

to be faithful, or I'm gonna be committed.

I mean, that's my choice.

-She'd been married once.

Her and Ryan had separate accounts.

You know, "You pay for this. I pay for that,"

and I don't know that she just wanted to go through that again.

-Redmond James O'Neal is born January 30th, 1985.

-She loved him more than anything.

It's, um, she adored that boy.

-Her strawberry-blond baby is what she would call him.

Oh, she was fascinated, fascinated with him.

-And I would love my child to be able to live

a somewhat normal life. Is that possible?

-Is it possible? -I don't know. I hope so.

I'm going to try, you know, with the values

that I bring from Texas and my parents.

-Our little boys were the same age,

and she sent Redmond to the school

where my son was going.

She'd call me every day, "Okay. What's going on today?"

and there wasn't an event that she missed.

-When she would get a part and have to be

on location for two or three months,

they'd pack everybody up, and they would all go with her.

-When she was on-set, she was always calling him

or constantly seeing how he was doing or what was going on,

very involved in it, I guess, as much as you can be

when you're doing the work that she was doing.

-Redmond was the most important thing to her,

and, you know, the problem is, when you live a life like that,

it's hard for the child to live a normal life.

It's just a very different world.

-She wanted Redmond to have a normal childhood

with a constant presence of his mom and his dad.

At the same time, she wanted her career to gain a foothold,

so she was devoting herself more to projects

like the Diane Downs story.

-The 1989 TV movie "Small Sacrifices"

is based on the true story of Diane Downs,

a young woman sentenced to life in prison for the murder

and attempted murder of her three children.

Farrah stars alongside real-life love Ryan O'Neal

and receives her second Emmy nomination

and fifth Golden Globe nomination.

-She basically helped create the television-movie industry

starring in TV movies, always getting huge ratings

and never just playing the kind of giggly blonde girl

but abused wife, et cetera.

-She took great pride in being able to shed the beautiful image

and show people that she was an actress, a serious actress.

-You think that women's roles are superior on television,

is that right, rather than the big screen,

more to choose from?

-I think that, yes, I think there are better roles,

I think because women actually get to carry the picture,

at least play a more active

rather than passive role with the exception of,

I think, maybe four or five features a year.

I know that "The Burning Bed"

I really don't think would've been made as a feature.

-When was I decorating her house,

there would be a pile of scripts next to her bed,

so I really feel there came a point

where she really had a choice of what she wanted to do,

and she wasn't going to take the easy route.

-Professionally, Farrah's career is on track and thriving,

but her personal life begins to unravel.

♪♪

♪♪

-Farrah Fawcett becomes known

as the 1980s queen of TV movies

as she plays a string of tough roles of strong-minded women,

but in 1991, the beauty queen turned serious actress

appears in her first comedy series,

a sitcom with her longtime love, Ryan O'Neal.

-They did a little sitcom together called "Good Sports,"

which was a critical disaster.

-When that failed and crashed and burned pretty quickly,

I think we'd all started to just kind of lose interest in them,

and that may be, in part, what helped bring about their demise.

-What were she and Ryan like together?

-They loved each other passionately.

I think when people love each other as passionately

as she and Ryan did,

they have also got to be very volatile, and they were.

-They were both stubborn. They were both powerful.

They were both famous, and they had a fascinating life together.

-Farrah has a streak, and Ryan has a streak,

and so sometimes,

you know, it could be a little combustible.

-California's 1994 Northridge earthquake

destroys Farrah's home.

It's a natural disaster

with lasting repercussions for Farrah and Ryan.

-That was a hard time for her.

We had just finished decorating her house.

It was perfection. It was her place to be,

and literally, the earthquake broke it in half.

That was around the same time she and Ryan were breaking up.

Her whole world was coming apart.

-You could just see that

the dynamics had definitely changed.

This wasn't paradise any longer.

-Much of her career was in the past.

She was not doing anything except for these

few little movies and occasional TV roles.

-Farrah had turned down requests

to pose nude throughout her career,

but at age 48, in this issue of "Playboy,"

she decides to do her first nude pictorial.

-I change with the seasons,

and just when you think you know me, the seasons change.

-She probably would've loved to make a return to the big screen,

and I know she did a few things

but not at the same magnitude that she had before.

She kind of made the resurgence with "Playboy,"

but she probably would've rather made that

in a serious role in a large film.

-Farrah's "Playboy" issue

becomes the best-selling of the 1990s.

However, her relationship with Ryan is turbulent.

In 1997, the couple calls it quits.

-I just happened to be there in California that day.

We were in Farrah's bedroom,

and I guess they had had some kind of an argument,

and she said, "Well, just, vamanos."

He just left, and she went on.

-Mm-hmm. It's very complicated.

It's going through ups and downs and...

bad and, you know, good.

It was a very difficult, difficult decision,

and I think you always -- He will always be in my life.

I mean, I think the best thing that we ever did

was produce our son,

so you can't take that element out of the whole,

and you know, what's interesting is that

everything's unpredictable.

-At 50, the newly single Farrah appears once again in "Playboy."

This time, she creates this accompanying pay-per-view video,

in which the former art student

uses her naked body as a paintbrush.

-The "Playboy" TV special,

the "Farrah Fawcett 'Playboy' TV Special,"

but it was very much about owning her

very many talents along with her aging beauty.

-I did "Playboy" -- What was it?

December 1995,

and I didn't really fulfill

what I set out to do,

and for me, that's just not acceptable.

-And I asked her if there was some guiding force in her life,

and she said she wanted to die

knowing that she had fulfilled this line from Shakespeare,

"Age cannot wither her,

nor custom stale her infinite variety of life,"

and that is Farrah.

She never wanted to slow down.

She never wanted to stop.

She never wanted age to take over.

She always wanted to be young Farrah.

-To promote the "Playboy" video and photo spread,

Farrah goes on a press tour, including one stop

that would become infamous on "David Letterman."

-We were running late because Farrah

didn't feel that her hair was quite right,

and we had to put her eyelashes on in the car.

It was tense.

I was so relieved that she actually got onto the show,

that the way that she acted on that appearance,

it was secondary.

-But Farrah's behavior in this "David Letterman" interview

will follow her the rest of her career.

-To prove that art sort of, like, they --

Wow. They receive it in, um...

[ Laughter ]

-I really thought I was looking out the window.

-Yeah. It's -- Yeah.

-I think the "David Letterman" appearance made

a lot of people question, "What was going on with Farrah?"

She seemed distracted.

There were rumors immediately that she was on drugs.

-I could really say with great confidence

that she wasn't using drugs before she went on that show.

Everybody was like, "Wow. She was acting really odd."

People didn't understand

that she was just trying to play a role.

-Even before the feedback came about her, I thought,

"She is being that girl,

that character that she's tried to push herself so hard out of,"

and then to do it at the interview, I think,

was a shock for everybody after the work that she had done,

but that's what she was doing, putting on her persona

that I think she thought people wanted her to be.

-I promoted things,

but it's different when you're sort of promoting yourself,

and there's nudity of any sort involved.

I was very uncomfortable with that.

I don't think that I really thought about me

having to get out there and you know, talk about it.

It just sort of snowballed.

-That really disturbed her

because she had spent such a career of people

trivializing her and then her working for respect,

and then, you know, at age 50,

she had sort been trivialized again.

-Yes. Yes. I have some regrets about that.

I don't think that I really was able to achieve

what I was so -- I had such conviction, you know?

I have regrets about a lot of, you know,

a lot of different things,

so I don't think it's really good to dwell on it.

I mean, it's gone. It's past.

-This same year, Farrah appears opposite Robert Duvall

in his film "The Apostle."

-It got some critical attention at the time,

but it was one of those independent movies that lasted

for about half a second in the public's imagination,

yet Duvall was one of the great masters of Hollywood cinema,

could get any actress in Hollywood

he wanted to work with him.

It would be a feather in her cap,

and I said, "Seriously, you hired Farrah Fawcett?"

and he says, "What are you talking about?

Do you not know what kind of great actress she is?"

and I hung up the phone, and I thought,

"It's unbelievable.

"She's had the same effect on him, Robert Duvall,

as she's had on somebody like me."

-It meant so much to her

to be able to do that with Robert Duvall.

That validates her being a legitimate actress.

This isn't about beauty. This is about acting.

-"The Apostle" earns good reviews,

but when Farrah begins dating director James Orr

and allegations of abuse surface,

the spotlight is once again on Farrah's personal life.

-For someone like Farrah who, by that point in her career,

had played multiple victims of domestic violence,

to then find herself in a real life scenario

where she was being subjected to violence, it was shocking.

-Orr is arrested for allegedly pushing Farrah down,

slamming her head, and trying to choke her during a fight.

Farrah appears on court, and Orr is found guilty

of one count of misdemeanor battery.

-She wasn't cracking up or freaking out or anything.

She was a...

You know, she just thought that she was right about the thing,

and she's a bulldog when it comes to that.

She...

She just don't like to be abused.

-Director Robert Ackerman who first directed Farrah in 1983

in the he play "Extremities" notices a change in the actress

when he directs her again in the 2000 TV movie, "Baby."

-She was still the same sweet, lovely person

that she always was, but she -- It was obvious

that she had been through some very difficult times.

She would go into her trailer, and she would --

It would be very hard to get her out.

She seemed to have lost a lot of, um,

I don't know, a lot of her spark.

-With me, it's, uh, I can't just slip by.

I'm judged, critiqued, even when I pull back,

and I choose not to work.

I really want out of the spotlight.

I want to have my life.

I have no control over that.

I'm in the press when I've...

there's no reason I should be in the press.

-Farrah increasingly spends more time

away from the spotlight.

-She just wouldn't go out.

She stayed in and just wanted to know what I did for the evening.

She couldn't go out and do anything or just have dinner

or not have a crowd go around her.

-Farrah was very private.

She never told anyone anything about her private life.

-To me, she was the "Mona Lisa."

You knew there was all this other life going on in her

that she wasn't talking about.

What I sensed and what she told me was that

she felt trapped by fame.

So you do wonder, as you wonder about all great beautiful women,

what kind of secret sadness

pervaded the dark corners of her life?

-My feeling is, and my dad said this,

you know, it's not how far you fall.

It's how quickly you bounce back.

So careers are made of bouncing,

I think, bouncing.

♪♪

-Welcome back to

"Farrah Fawcett: Behind Closed Doors."

In the '70s, she was the face and body of jiggle TV.

In the '80s, she reinvented herself as a serious actress,

with roles in "Extremities" and "The Burning Bed."

In the '90s, after making headlines for "Playboy"

appearances, difficulties with an ex-love,

and an unsettling "David Letterman" appearance,

Farrah Fawcett is once again rebooting her life and career.

Now in her 50s, the former art student returns to her passion.

-She loved art.

That was what she wanted to be was an artist, a sculptor.

-And we've got her piece right here.

It's beautiful.

-Yes, and she was very, very talented.

-She kept making artwork her whole life long,

and she would leave it for years at a time.

But she kept it up.

-From female nudes to sculptures

to abstract paintings.

-It was around all the time. She would make some.

She would give it to us in the family.

Her artwork from when she was younger hung

on her walls in the houses.

It was either my grandparents house,

and then they would send something over,

and my mom would send something back.

So they would trade all this artwork.

-And she said she never felt more like herself

than when she had her hair pulled back in a ponytail,

and she was just wearing a t-shirt

and had her hands in a bunch of clay.

She really must have felt connected to the artwork,

again in this role as being a maker

and a creator of whatever image she wanted

and not at the mercy of what other people wanted from her.

-The reason that that art was so important to her

is because no one could ever say she was a good artist

because she was pretty,

because the two things were not connected.

And so she knew the accolades she got for art

were purely about her talent and not about her looks.

-You know, artwork will always tell the story for itself.

So if you just look at the marks that she made it,

and how she did it, and what she focused on,

you see that she really was an empowered female.

-I'm constantly learning about art, constantly,

and you would think I would know so much.

I mean, you'd think I'd know so much about acting now.

It's been 30 years.

But I'm always learning the same with being a mother.

I think that you never stop growing and learning

how to be a mom.

It's a challenge.

-Troubling for Farrah is her now teenage son, Redmond's,

struggle with addiction,

a battle he faces into adulthood.

-It's tragic.

I think, in the simplest terms, it's tragic.

I mean, such a sweet boy, such a loving boy.

I mean, amazing personality,

funny, extremely bright,

he's just had a tough go of it.

-One of the two things that you two bonded over were your sons.

You had had some troubles around the same time, as well.

-Well, I had been through some issues with both of my sons,

who had struggled with addiction when they were younger,

and as everyone is pretty aware of,

Redmond had his problems when he was a teenager.

And so Farrah and I talked a lot about it.

We spent hours on the phone talking about it.

-Separated since 1997, Ryan and Farrah

find their way back to each other four years later.

-It was tragedy that brought Ryan and Farrah back together.

What happened?

-They had broken up for period of time.

But Ryan was diagnosed with leukemia,

and so she came back into his life to be there for him,

and he went into remission.

-You can look at whatever chapter.

You can read about this fight or that fight or one

betraying the other or never getting married, breaking up.

But the through-line of all of that was they loved each other.

-They had a love that,

whether sometimes good or bad, you know,

sometimes you end up going back with someone if it wasn't great.

But then you break apart, and go back together again.

I think they were good together and bad together.

-With Farrah by his side, Ryan is able to recover

and would stay in treatment for leukemia

and ultimately came out the better for it.

-But sadly, Farrah's sister isn't so lucky.

-My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer at first.

She was given three to six months to live.

She ended up living a year and a half.

Seeing my mom deteriorate like that,

it was devastating for Farrah, and the deterioration, you know,

it's long, and it's ugly, and it's painful,

and it was hard on her.

-Farrah had come to terms with lots of death around her,

but I think she kind of threw herself into work,

and she just got back to work and did what she did.

-In a change of pace from the dark

and serious characters she had become known for,

Farrah chooses some comedic roles,

including an appearance in the ABC series,

"Spin City" and the film, "The Cookout."

-I think she had done it with the dramatic roles.

So after she had done "Burning Bed" and "Extremities"

and all those different projects, I think she thought,

"You know what? I killed it. Let's move onto something else."

-She's getting guest spots on "Ally McBeal," the cool cat.

Like, she's just getting offered these roles,

and I think people realize,

"If you offer it Farrah, she might say yes."

-She had great comedic timing, and obviously no one really saw

that with the work that she had done before.

So I think that she was ready to go down a different road.

-"Chasing Farrah," a reality series,

is Farrah's next project in 2005.

The introduction to the show, which lasts only one season,

features Farrah's parents.

But this would be the last appearance Farrah

makes with her mother,

who passes away March 4, 2005.

-Crushed, absolutely crushed, you know?

They were so close for so long.

She was really torn up about my grandmother.

-That was really difficult.

They were her foothold, her ground,

and always there and supportive,

and I think that was a really sad time during her life that,

I mean, to lose her mom and her sister.

-I feel like she got sick shortly thereafter,

just missing her mother.

-Her mother was in the hospital in Texas,

and Farrah was there, and she was just there 24/7,

and she started having symptoms,

and she didn't do anything about them.

And then her mother died, and she still had her father

to try to take care of, and I remember saying to her,

"If you don't take care of yourself,

you're not going to be able to take care of anybody else."

Farrah would always show up for everyone,

at the expense of herself.

-And in August 2006, Farrah shows up once again,

making a celebrated appearance at the Emmys

with her "Charlie's Angels" co-stars.

-At the Emmys, the three Angels reunited.

They stole the show. The three of them walked out.

They looked fabulous.

It was a standing ovation.

-She is the picture of health at the Emmys.

But, in fact, Farrah is

experiencing some frightening symptoms,

including unexplained bleeding.

-She eventually went to the doctor,

and that's when she was diagnosed with cancer,

and if Farrah had gone to the doctor

when she first had symptoms,

she might very well be alive today.

-She is diagnosed with

an aggressive form of anal cancer.

-Farrah was so shocked to be diagnosed with cancer

that she didn't even believe them at first.

She thought, "No, this can't be true."

I mean, there was no one who seemed healthy or stronger

and more alive.

-With her friend Alana Stewart by her side,

Farrah embarks on a series of treatments in Germany.

But would they be enough?

♪♪

-I've always believed in taking care of myself.

-In this early 1980s public service announcement

for the American Cancer Society,

Farrah Fawcett is the image of health,

beauty, and vitality.

-And when you've got your health, you've got it all.

-But September 2006,

the former poster girl is devastated to learn

that she now faces a cancer battle of her own.

-Three words I never, ever thought possible

that I would hear --

malignant, tumor, anal.

-You learned about her cancer through the tabloids?

-My daughter Kimberly came in and said,

"Mom, does Farrah have cancer? It was just on the Internet."

I said, "Oh, that's ridiculous."

I said, "That's those ridiculous tabloids again."

So I called her and it took a long time for her

to come to the phone, and she said, "Hi," and I said,

"I just heard something. It's not true, is it?"

And she -- there was this long pause,

and she started to cry.

She said, "Yeah, it's true."

She just hated the word, "anal," and it was very hard for her

to hear her name in the same sentence as anal cancer.

-The 59-year-old begins chemotherapy and radiation

at UCLA Medical Center in 2006.

-She was really determined that she was going to beat this.

-The treatment went on for three months,

and it was brutal, and then after the treatments stopped,

she started to kind of slowly regain her strength.

-Farrah celebrates her 60th birthday in February 2007

with the news that her cancer is in remission.

-She was looking forward to starting painting again,

and she was just getting back into her life.

Then suddenly the cancer came back,

and then everything changed from that.

-Just three months after being declared cancer-free,

in May 2007, doctors ask Farrah

to come to the hospital for new test results.

Farrah takes a camera along with her.

-Ryan's car broke down, and so she had to go by herself.

So she grabbed her little camera,

and she filmed it because she wanted to remember

what the doctors were telling her.

-The fourth word I never thought

I would hear -- recurrence.

-Dr. Lawrence Piro is one of the many doctors

who works with Farrah through her illness.

-I'll never forget.

She was curled up on the couch in my office,

kind of like a shivering kitten,

because she was just so completely undone

by the fact that this had come back so fast.

-And she had eight or nine tumors in her liver,

and at that point, that was practically a death sentence.

-It was Stage 4,

and the life expectancy of someone with Stage 4

anal cancer can be very short

because there are not a lot of effective treatments.

-But after the initial shock was over,

she just became determined to win out over it,

and she was trying to decide what path she was going to take,

what treatment.

-We talked about what the traditional options were,

and we talked about some non-traditional options.

-I just happened to be going to Germany,

to this clinic that I had gone to several times,

and she called me and said,

"I'm thinking about coming to Germany."

And I put her on the phone with a doctor, and the doctor said,

"Yeah, I think we can help you."

And so she said to me, "What do you think?"

And she said, "The doctors here don't want me to go."

And I said, "Farrah, if I encourage you to come here,

and it doesn't work, then I'm going to feel responsible,"

and I said, "You really have to talk to more doctors,"

I said, "and pray about it,

and then you have to make your own decision."

-If she thought it was going to work,

then there was no way you were going to change her mind.

There was absolutely no way to change her mind.

-She said, "I'm just going to go to Germany

and then do alternative."

Farrah was always going to do that other thing.

-The next day, she called me back and said,

"We're coming tomorrow," and she and Ryan got on a plane.

♪♪

-Farrah arrives in Germany

to begin an alternative course of treatment.

-She said, "Here, will you film the doctors' meeting?

Because I want to remember all of this," and I said,

"Well, I don't know how to use this camera."

And she said, "Oh, it's really easy. You can do it."

So I filmed the meeting,

and then we just started filming everything,

and we started looking at this film, and she said,

"You know, maybe we should do this as a documentary

because there's so much for people to learn."

-She filmed everything, without regard

to whether she looked good or how poignant it would be,

which I thought was really amazing because here's a woman

whose fame, you know, was made by extraordinary beauty,

and to be willing to show yourself

in far less than optimal circumstances...

I even remember hearing someone in Hollywood say,

"Wow, like, why would she do this?"

-I'm lying in bed, trying to sleep...

-Anal cancer isn't something

that most people would be comfortable

telling the whole world they were dealing with.

But Farrah did not shy away from making it very clear,

like, "This is the type of cancer I have,

and this is what I'm intending to do about it."

-The trips to Germany were very rigorous for her.

They were long trips on a plane,

and then those treatments, you know, were difficult,

and she had to drive, within Germany, several hours

to go to the different places that were doing things,

and she would be very sick and driving in the car

and throwing up.

-The thing that was so interesting about it

was we actually had fun

because she loved getting away from cancer.

She said, "I don't want cancer to be my life."

You know, we'd watch movies. We'd eat pizza.

We'd go on little outings,

but anything just not to be constantly reminded of cancer.

-♪ You know woman

-After months of treatment and shuttling back and forth

between Germany and Los Angeles, Farrah receives good news.

-The tumors had all shrunk.

They had all died. They were gone.

I mean, she was literally cancer-free.

-Wow. -And...

Or tumor-free, because, you know, with cancer, they...

-The cells are there, mm-hmm.

-The cells are still in the body,

and that's what you have to work on getting rid of

so it doesn't come back,

and it seemed to be really working.

-All cancer journeys have successes and failures.

We were very often sitting over the monitor at the CAT scanner,

looking at the new scan

to reveal whether we made progress or not.

-When her 61st birthday arrives in February 2008,

Farrah has reason to celebrate.

-We spent her birthday in Germany,

and we gave a party for her,

and there were a few people that happened to be there.

Redmond came over, and I remember she said,

"This is the best birthday of my life

because I'm alive."

-She wanted to just keep blazing forward,

and that's what we did, until we couldn't anymore.

♪♪

♪♪

-On her 61st birthday in February 2008,

the "it" girl of the 1970s, Farrah Fawcett,

is undergoing life-saving cancer treatment in Germany.

Initially, Farrah began filming her appointment

so she wouldn't miss anything.

Now she begins to think there may be a higher purpose

in filming her journey.

-She'd started thinking about maybe

turning it into a documentary,

and her idea was that we'd do all this filming

and then go into the editing room.

-After several positive weeks in Germany,

Farrah returns home to Los Angeles.

There are good days and bad days.

-She's trying to carry on her life

and not give over her life to cancer.

But at the same time, you know,

we had to treat all the symptoms,

and so it was just a constant back and forth, back and forth.

-We're looking at your liver again.

-In April 2008,

Farrah meets with her doctors to look at her latest scans,

and what they see is devastating.

The cancer is back and spreading.

-We had been through a lot of options,

and our options were getting, you know, more and more limited,

and that moment was, I think, the first moment

that Farrah really let it

into her true psyche

that maybe she was going to die of this disease.

-Farrah and Alana returned to Germany again,

and despite the prognosis, it is not all bad times.

-Here we are, these two girls on our own.

There were just so many funny crazy things.

I just remember the one night,

when she was so sick all night long,

and she was literally throwing up, like, every 15 minutes,

and it was deserted there.

We were in this room, in this private wing of the hospital,

and there was this little nurse

who didn't speak a word of English.

And she kept fluttering around Farrah,

and she kept putting these heat things on her,

and Farrah kept throwing them off.

And she finally walked out of the room, and Farrah went,

"Oh, my God, they've sent me a loon."

I don't know why that just struck me as so funny,

and we started to laugh about it,

and she's in the midst of throwing up.

-Ready to get back home, Farrah decides

to try a clinical trial in California in August 2008.

-She decided to shave her world-famous

glorious golden hair.

How hard was that for her?

-She went through almost three years of treatments

without losing her hair, and this one last trial,

this one last chemo that she did made her hair start

to fall out in big clumps.

She just decided to shave her head.

She wasn't going to let her hair fall out clump

by clump and be the victim.

She was going to take the horse by the reins and do it herself.

-Here, we're dealing with Farrah,

who had the most famous hair in the world.

Millions of women copied her because of that hair.

Then just chop it off one day,

just gone, boom, gone, no more hair.

-Fall turns to winter, and Farrah spends the holidays

juggling treatment with festivities.

But by the time her birthday arrives again,

in February 2009, Farrah takes a turn for the worst.

-It's no one's fault because trials work for some people,

and they don't for others.

It caused the cancer to grow

at an unbelievable speed,

and by that time, she was not well at all.

The doctors had suggested she go back to Germany.

-Farrah and Alana make their final trip to Germany.

One of the German doctors warns Alana

that Farrah could die any day.

-We came back from Germany,

and some complications set in and some things.

She got an infection in her port,

and one thing led to another.

-The treatments had taken their toll on her.

But there was not a time, during those final days,

where she talked about dying.

There was not a time where she ever gave up.

-Farrah is too ill to finish overseeing her documentary,

but it premiers on NBC, on May 15th, 2009.

It delivers the highest ratings in NBC's Friday night

time slot in more than a year, other that the Olympics.

-I had no idea that the degree of interest that would be there.

People got to see who the real Farrah Fawcett actually is.

♪♪

-She wanted to tell people, "Don't give up,"

because that was going to be her message

of the documentary is, "Don't give up,"

because she was going to be alive at the end of it.

You know, her plan was to show people you could beat it.

-I recorded her last phone call to me,

and it's so sweet and so tender, and she said,

"We're just going to grow old together beautifully."

-Things took a turn for the worse,

and she had to go to the hospital,

and she never wanted to die in a hospital.

But she ended up in intensive care,

and there was just no way she could have even gotten home.

-All of her organs were starting to fail,

and so that's when we knew it was just a matter of time.

-After a nearly three-year battle,

Farrah Fawcett dies at the age of 62,

on June 25th, 2009.

-She fought the fight as hard as anybody could ever do it.

-She was courageous, and you could weave that

through her entire career, and she ended it that way.

-Her doctor and the nurses around her,

at the very, very last moments of her life,

said they'd never seen anyone hold on to life like Farrah.

-Farrah's loved ones from Texas join Hollywood stars

in a private funeral for Farrah.

-It was beyond sad,

and, you know, my grandfather's there,

and you never want to bury your children.

I don't think there's anybody who has lost someone

that didn't think,

"Could you have done one thing more?

Could you have said, like, one more thing?

You know, like, how much you meant to us."

-I'm using what she taught me,

to survive, to go on, to care for my son, Redmond.

-Redmond was facing some serious issues with addiction,

fighting an uphill battle, as well.

-Farrah's son, Redmond, who was incarcerated

at the time of Farrah's passing,

is granted a release from jail to say goodbye.

-He was at the funeral.

He came, and they allowed him to carry her casket.

-Farrah would want Redmond to feel loved and to be happy.

I think it's simple.

-Two years before her death, Farrah had created

the Farrah Fawcett Foundation to promote research,

assist patients undergoing treatment,

and develop prevention programs.

Today, her friend, Alana Stewart, oversees it.

-Why is this important to you, the work that you're doing here?

-It's something that would mean an awful lot to Farrah.

I feel like it's a way of carrying on her legacy

and her memory.

We are doing some really important work

in cancer research, in her name.

-Do you feel a responsibility still,

in keeping her presence in your everyday?

-I feel like she's still with us.

Sometimes I'll look outside my window,

and a hummingbird will appear,

and I always feel like that's her,

coming to, like, kind of check in and say hello.

-And the butterflies?

You're wearing your butterfly shirt.

-Farrah died in June of 2009,

and I was pretty exhausted, and so I went to this house

in Mexico that Farrah and I had gone.

I was lying outside in the sun, and right next to me

was the chaise where Farrah would always lie,

and I suddenly was just overwhelmed

with this feeling of sadness, tears rolling down my face,

and I saw this white something outside, fluttering around.

It was a big white butterfly, like this big, and it flew over.

It had these big brown eyes, and it looked at me

for, like, three or four seconds,

and I was just looking at it, and I just knew, you know?

And I just started crying, and it flew away,

and I just know that that was her saying to me,

"I'm okay. Don't be sad."

I know, I mean, it's just --

-I need a moment.

-It was the craziest thing ever.

I never had anything like that happen to me before, ever.

I just feel like, you know, her presence is still with us.

-She wanted to be remembered for how she lived.

You know, remember the life, remember the career.

A small town girl, really,

mushrooming into this wonderful thing.

-It is a movie script.

It's a real life movie.

A little girl gets off the bus from Texas, gets photographed,

is recognized for her beauty.

It doesn't have a happy ending,

but we're still looking at photographs of her

in her happy days.

-She wasn't content to just stay pinned up

on somebody's wall.

She was a fighter.

She was determined to defy expectations and limitations.

-There was no question that she was in charge.

People would stand up, allow her to sit at the head of the table,

and it's very difficult

for women in the entertainment industry,

particularly at that time, to command a room that way.

-Farrah would want people to know that she was a person

that enjoyed her life to the fullest.

I was lucky to call her my friend,

and I miss her every day.

-She was original.

I don't think there's ever been anyone like her.

She came in at a time when I guess the world was just ready

for this beautiful sexy all-American golden girl,

and that's how I always think of Farrah,

is our all-American golden girl.

-What will I be remembered for? I don't know.

[ Clicks tongue ] Um...

Surviving? That'd be good.

How about surviving?

You know, in a business that's,

I think, very difficult

and especially difficult for a woman.

♪♪

♪♪