Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009)

By Mad Dog
Published: Jun 25, 2009

I interviewed Farrah Fawcett several times, but I can’t say I understood her. The immensity of her fame separated us, of course — it’s hard to imagine any single woman as the fantasy object of an entire generation. But there was also the looming figure of the thuggish Ryan O’Neal. The night we met, he practically threw me out of the house for the offense of giggling with his son. Later, a weepy Tatum O’Neal called to beg me not to publish the list of men she’d slept with — a list, she said, that her father had given me. [He hadn’t.] Through it all, Farrah was warm and helpful. In a number of roles, she showed she was more than a cute blonde, but her greatest acting may have been to convince others — and herself — that her home life really wasn’t a war zone.