LOS ANGELES -- Farrah Fawcett, who played a battered 1970s wife on the 1984 movie The Burning Bed and posed naked for Playboy at 48 years of age, has died. She was 62.
Ms. Fawcett was an American icon. She will be sorely missed.Per a rep at Rogers & Cowan, Fawcett's publicity firm, the actress passed away at 12:28 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time Ryan O'Neal, Fawcett's longtime leading man, and friend Alana Stewart with her, the statement said.
In an interview to air tonight on 20/20, O'Neal said he'd recently proposed to the ailing Fawcett, and that she'd accepted. The Love Story actor sounded certain the longtime unmarrieds would—finally—tie the knot.
"We will, as soon as she can say yes," O'Neal said. "Maybe we can just nod her head."
Fawcett, who in recent months had stopped receiving cancer treatment, talked frankly about her battle in Farrah's Story, a raw, camcorder-shot documentary that aired in May on NBC.
"I know that everyone will die eventually, but I do not want to die of this disease," Fawcett said in the film.
"I want to stay alive."
A turning point in Fawcett's career came in 1984, when she earned an Emmy nomination, and finally respect, as the battered wife in The Burning Bed. She went on to rate two more Emmy nods, one for the 1989 TV-movie, Small Sacrifices, and one for a 2001 guest appearance on The Guardian. She garnered Oscar buzz for playing a revenge-seeking rape victim in the 1986 film, Extremities, a project she first tackled off-Broadway.
If anything, Fawcett's Playboy pictorial was the highlight of the period. Age 48 and sans a red—or any other kind of—bathing suit, Fawcett posed nude, and brought Hugh Hefner's empire its best-selling issue of the decade.
