Beginning as a model in advertisements which emphasized her toothsome smile (e.g., Ultra-Brite toothpaste), flowing, "feathered" hair (Wella Balsam shampoo) and soft, seductive manner (Noxema men's shaving cream), Fawcett really caught on as one of the stars of the Aaron Spelling TV series, "Charlie's Angels". As Jill Munroe, one of three beauteous detectives whose boss was the off-screen voice of John Forsythe, Fawcett (billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors; she was then married to TV star Lee Majors) stood out in contrast to her brunette co-stars, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith. The series, a camp classic for some, "family-style porn, a mild erotic fantasy" for others, hardly presented plausible situations or opportunities for complex characterizations, but Fawcett's limited emoting skills if anything added a vulnerable modesty and appeal to her formidable California-girl image.

Leaving the series after only two seasons (though she later returned for semi-regular guest spots during the third and fourth seasons) Fawcett attempted to cash in on her newfound popularity by switching to feature films. Her ventures in this arena ("Somebody Killed Her Husband" 1978; "Sunburn" 1979; "Saturn 3" 1980), however, failed with both the critics and the moviegoing public.

It was not really until 1983 that Fawcett, having cut her hair and left both her business manager and her husband, began to take greater charge of her own career, determined to shed the superficialities of her star persona. Playing a woman who turns the tables on an attempted rapist and torments him in the Off-Broadway play "Extremities", Fawcett, though cast in a role and play of limited (if highly potent) emotional range and development, thoroughly impressed the critics with her displays of rage, craftiness and desire for revenge. She repeated her stage performance in a 1986 film version of the play, and has since played a series of unglamorous, serious and determined women in TV-movies such as "The Burning Bed" (NBC, 1984), "Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story" and "Between Two Women" (both ABC, 1986) and in the biopic of photographer "Margaret Bourke-White" (TNT, 1989).

Having split with Lee Majors in 1982, Fawcett (since then billed simply as Farrah Fawcett) began a long-term relationship with actor Ryan O'Neal, with whom she had a son in 1985. The two returned to series TV after a long absence to co-star in the CBS sitcom, "Good Sports" (1991). While the show was not a popular success, Fawcett, older, wiser but still stylish, brought to the series a relaxed quality not often seen in her work and a confidence which was doubtless the result of her quest for dignity and respect.

Fawcett continued to act in TV-movies and miniseries, most notably in the Westerns "The Substitute Wife" (NBC, 1994) and "Children of the Dust" (CBS, 1995). After a six year absence, she returned to features as Jonathan Taylor Thomas' mother who plans to marry lawyer Chevy Chase in the uneven comedy "Man of the House" (1995). Just prior to her public break-up with O'Neal in 1997, Fawcett starred in the pay-per-view special "Farrah Fawcett: All of Me" for the Playboy Channel, in which, among other things, she used her nude body to create paintings. (It was later released on video.) Later that year, she scored a critical triumph as Robert Duvall's straying wife in "The Apostle."

The actress prompted public concern about her state of mind after a physical altercation with an ex, director James Orr, and a bizarre, unfocused appearance on David Letterman's talk show. Regardless, Fawcett turned in a nicely modulated turn as Richard Gere's mentally disturbed wife in Robert Altman's "Dr. T & the Women" (2000), and delivered solid performances in a pair of telepics, "Baby" (2001), as the matriarch of a scarred family enlivened when they take in an abandoned baby, and "Jewel" (2001), as a 1940s-era forty-year-old mother battling for more for her child with Down's Syndrome. Less stellar was the tawdry TV miniseries "Hollywood Wives: The New Generation" (2003), based on author Jackie Collins' potboiler, with Fawcett as a Hollywood star fed up with her philandering hubby. The actress then resurfaced in the Queen Latifah-produced urban comedy "The Cookout" (2004) before revealing herself with her own reality series, "Chasing Farrah" (TV Land, 2005- ), with the requisite cameras following Fawcett throughout her daily life.