Farrah Fawcett Dies of Cancer at 62

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Farrah Fawcett has been hospitalized in Los Angeles since Thursday, the latest setback in her long battle with cancer, PEOPLE has confirmed.

First diagnosed in 2006, the 62-year-old actress has undergone chemotherapy and aggressive alternative treatments in the past.

She saw her cancer go into remission, then return in May 2007.

Radaronline.com was first to report her hospitalization.

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Farrah Fawcett, who skyrocketed to fame as one of a trio of impossibly glamorous private eyes on TV's Charlie's Angels, has died after a long battle with cancer. She was 62.

Fawcett died at 9:28 a.m. PST on Thursday at St. John's Heath Center in Santa Monica, Calif. She was with longtime partner Ryan O'Neal, friend Alana Stewart, friend and hairdresser Mela Murphy and her doctor Lawrence Piro. She had recently returned to St. John's for treatment of complications from anal cancer, first diagnosed three years ago.

"She's gone. She now belongs to the ages," O'Neal tells PEOPLE, also confirming that she received the last rites of the Catholic Church. "She's now with her mother and sister and her God. I loved her with all my heart. I will miss her so very, very much. She was in and out of consciousness. I talked to her all through the night. I told her how very much I loved her. She's in a better place now."

Added O'Neal: "She was with her team when she passed ... Her eyes were open, but she didn't say anything. But you could see in her eyes that she recognized us."

Though O'Neal recently said that he and Fawcett had planned to wed, they did not tie the knot. "There just wasn't time, and Farrah wasn't in any condition to do it," says O'Neal.

Friends and family plan to honor Fawcett with a funeral service at a Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles in the next few days.

Like so much about Fawcett's life – including her bumpy relationship with O'Neal – her heroic struggle to beat the disease was closely followed by her legion of fans.

"I've watched her this past year fight with such courage and so valiantly, but with such humor," Fawcett's Charlie's Angels costar Kate Jackson told PEOPLE in November 2007.

O'Neal, in particular, remained a steadfast supporter of Fawcett, who, despite her frailty, spent the last months of her life filming a TV documentary chronicling her illness, including several trips to Germany to undergo experimental treatment. Fawcett is survived by her son with O'Neal, Redmond, 24, who is currently serving a jail term in California after repeated drug offenses.

Redmond was not there at Fawcett's side when she died, but spoke to his mother on the phone and told her "how much he loved her and asked her to please forgive him that he was so very, very sorry," O'Neal tells PEOPLE.


Texas Charmer
Blonde, blue-eyed and petite – and with a trademark mane as flowing and famous as the M.G.M. lion's – the Corpus Christi, Texas, native was born Feb. 2, 1947, the younger daughter of an oil-field contractor and his homemaker wife.

A magnet for male students at the University of Texas at Austin, Fawcett eventually set off for Hollywood. Quickly noticed by casting agents, she began landing small parts in forgettable movies, such as 1970's Myra Breckinridge, based on a gender-bending novel by Gore Vidal. Her role: an ingenuous blonde.

In 1973, Fawcett married actor Lee Majors, forever known as Col. Steve Austin on TV's The Six Million Dollar Man. Three years later, she appeared in the cult sci-fi film Logan's Run and began her stint with costars Jackson and Jaclyn Smith on Charlie's Angels. Well-coiffed and scantily clad, the threesome created an instant sensation, with a weekly following of 23 million fans.

Fawcett moved on after just one season. By then, she was already a phenomenon, having donned a one-piece red bathing suit and a perfect smile for her legendary pin-up poster, which sold a still-record 12 million copies.

"I became famous almost before I had a craft," Fawcett told The New York Times in 1986, four years after her divorce from Majors. (By then, she was already involved with Ryan O'Neal.) "I didn't study drama at school. I was an art major. Suddenly, when I was doing Charlie's Angels, I was getting all this fan mail, and I didn't really know why. I don't think anybody else did, either."


Bumpy Film Career
Though she left TV for what was assumed to be greener pastures – feature films – Fawcett's initial three big-screen vehicles all crash-landed. Her first, 1978's Somebody Killed Her Husband, was lampooned in MAD magazine under the title, Somebody Killed Her Career.

It took some serious dramatic TV roles, including that of a battered wife in 1984's The Burning Bed (which earned her an Emmy nomination), as well as starring in small-screen biopics about pioneering photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and ill-fated Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, for Fawcett to bounce back.

"What would you do if someone said to you, 'You're so popular right now that you can be on the cover of every magazine, but if you do that, you might get overexposed and a backlash will develop'?" Fawcett told The Times after she had emerged from one of the valleys of her career.

Still, she said of fighting for survival in Hollywood, "That's life. Everything has positive and negative consequences."

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Farrah Fawcett's iconic moments were brief – the one season as Jill Munroe on Charlie's Angels and the poster, both from the mid-'70s – but they defined her life in the public eye for the next 40 years: The blonde hair and dazzling smile, both of which seemed to hold and reflect California sun, as well as the all-American desirability.

Those moments are fixed in amber. Those are what really matter.

Fawcett worked hard to establish herself as a serious actress in the '80s, and she succeeded in roles that were unexpectedly sorrowful and angry: She was an abused wife who finally murders her husband in 1984's Burning Bed (an Emmy-nominated performance), and a woman who traps and torments her rapist in the play and 1986 movie of Extremities.

She wasn't an actress who made revenge into something dramatically exhilarating: Oddly enough, what she projected with particular force were fear and fragility. Two of her best performances were small but perfectly realized: She was (again) the abused wife in Robert Duvall's 1997 Apostle, praying with him and terrified of him; and she was a wealthy Dallas housewife afflicted by a mysterious, Alzheimer's-like disease, drifting off into unreality in Robert Altman's 2000 Dr. T and the Women.

She had trouble sustaining a career, and her image was often upended by poorly managed or controlled stunts: a spaced-out appearance on David Letterman in 1997, painting her naked body for a Playboy video, a regrettable 2005 attempt at a reality series called Chasing Farrah.

She summed up her life and her imminent death from cancer in May in the uncomfortably intimate NBC documentary, Farrah's Story: The world-famous hair fell out, and MRI readouts charted the decline of her once-radiant body. In the end we saw her only as a tiny figure hidden under a blanket in a darkened bedroom.

Like her best acting, it was a heartbreaking gesture.

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Farrah Fawcett's son Redmond O'Neal, currently serving a jail sentence for violating his probation on drug charges, will attend his mother's memorial service on Tuesday, his attorney tells PEOPLE.

"That's an absolute yes," says William Slattery about plans for the 24-year-old son of Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal to go to the funeral.

O'Neal will be allowed to leave the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, Calif., where he is enrolled in an inmate treatment program, for the invitation-only ceremony, which will be held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels at 4 p.m. PST in downtown Los Angeles.

Fawcett, 62, died after a long battle with cancer on Thursday.

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I remember seeing a movie of her with Burt Reynolds ... she was very Sexy!

62 ... that is too young ... Oh Well!

G!

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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, was among pallbearers who accompanied the casket, covered in yellow and orange flowers, into the Roman Catholic cathedral.

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.

Fans and news media watched from across a street. The service was closed to the public.

Fawcett died Thursday at age 62 after a public battle with cancer. O'Neal and Stewart were at her side.

"After a long and brave battle with cancer, our beloved Farrah has passed away," O'Neal said in a statement last week. "Although this is an extremely difficult time for her family and friends, we take comfort in the beautiful times that we shared with Farrah over the years and the knowledge that her life brought joy to so many people around the world."

Diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2006, Fawcett's battle with the disease was documented in "Farrah's Story," which aired last month on NBC.

Stewart, a producer of the documentary, said Fawcett was "much more than a friend; she was my sister."

"Although I will miss her terribly, I know in my heart that she will always be there as that angel on the shoulder of everyone who loved her," Stewart said in a statement.

Fawcett and O'Neal, 68, have a son, 24-year-old Redmond, who has been jailed since April 5 on drug charges.

Last week, a judge granted his request to attend Fawcett's funeral. The order by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jane Godfrey allows Redmond O'Neal to be released for three hours and wear street clothes to attend the funeral.