Brave beauty Farrah Fawcett lost her courageous battle with cancer today, bringing a sad curtain on the “Charlie’s Angels” star’s public fight with the deadly disease.
Fawcett, who was 62, died at 9:28 a.m. Pacific time with long-time companion Ryan O’Neal and friend Alana Stewart at her bedside.
MORE: TV Specials Pay Tribute to Farrah
PHOTOS: Farrah Through the Years
“After a long and brave battle with cancer, our beloved Farrah has passed away,” O’Neal said in a statement today. “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.”
Earlier this week, O’Neal told The Post he had asked Fawcett to marry him and she said yes. But the “Angel’s” health took a fast, grave turn for the worst last night and they couldn’t tie the knot in time, sources said.
“I’m terribly sad about Farrah’s passing,” former “Angels” co-star Cheryl Ladd said today. “She was incredibly brave, and God will be welcoming her with open arms.”
“Angel” Jaclyn Smith said she hopes Fawcett is now in a better place.
“Farrah had courage, she had strength, and she had faith,” Smith said. “And now she has peace as she rests with the real angels.”
Plans for Fawcett’s funeral were not immediately set. Her family asked, in lieu of flowers, that donations be made to the Farrah Fawcett Foundation for cancer research.
Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer in September 2006 and it eventually spread to her liver — all while video cameras rolled, memorializing the TV icon’s heartbreaking struggle for life.
Fawcett originally shot the footage for note-taking purposes, so she could remember medication and diagnosis handed down by doctors.
Then during upbeat moments of treatment, Fawcett planned to use the footage to produce an inspirational tale of her comeback against cancer, O’Neal said recently.
But in recent months as cancer spread, Fawcett kept cameras keep rolling, knowing her story wouldn’t have a Hollywood ending.
“I think she may have believed that she would survive and have it documented, film documented,” O’Neal said recently.
“[She] had a terrible last year. Terrible time.”
The footage — shot primarily by Stewart — was turned into a popular NBC special, “Farrah’s Story,” that drew 9 million viewers on May 15.
Viewers endured wrenching scenes of Fawcett writhing in pain in hospital beds, clutching her rosary beads and even throwing up.
“She was projectile vomiting and she looks up and me and says ‘Why aren’t you filming this? This is what cancer is,'” Stewart said in advance to “Farrah’s Story” airing.
Fawcett is survived by her 91-year-old widower dad James Fawcett, who lives in Houston.
The actress lost her big sister, 62-year-old Diane Fawcett Walls, to lung cancer in 2001. Their mom Pauline Fawcett passed away in 2005.
“I’ve loved her more these last years than ever,” O’Neal said recently.
Corpus Christi, Texas, native Farrah Fawcett will best be remembered for the iconic TV show “Charlie’s Angels,” playing Jill Munroe.
The 1976 hit included co-stars Kate Jackson and Smith. The “Angels” portrayed police officers hired away from mundane jobs by a mysterious gumshoe group, the Townsend Agency and their never-seen boss, voiced by actor John Forsythe.
Using their police training and sexual allure, the “Angels” titillated ABC viewers during daring undercover assignments that always ended with the arrest of a bad guy.
“Charlie’s Angels” and a famed bathing suit poster in 1976 spring boarded Fawcett to mega-stardom.
“I hate making this kind of comparison, but if film is held in one regard and TV in another regard, then I’d say Farrah was to TV as Marilyn Monroe was the film,” said TV academy executive board member Sheila Manning — a casting agent who got Fawcett some of her first TV commercials.
Fawcett, flashing an infectious smile and playing with her teased blonde hair, sold more than 12 million copies of the pinup that came to define an era of American beauty.
A generation of curling-iron-wielding young women tried — and usually failed — to recreate the “Angel’s” blonde halo.
Her trademark golden locks even played a star role in her sad demise.
In “Farrah’s Story,” as cancer treatment took its toll on her beautiful hair, Fawcett took shears to herself — cutting curls before the disease could take them.
Fawcett unveiled her new look during a during a poignant scene of the documentary. The dying actress had shaved off all but several tresses of her bangs, so she could wear a skullcap and still have the appearance of hair underneath.
“That hair, I don’t think anyone will ever forget Farrah’s beautiful hair,” Manning said.
“Has there ever been anyone, maybe Jennifer Aniston, who the girls have copied a hairstyle more than Farrah’s?”
Fawcett, who married “The Six Million Dollar Man” star Lee Majors in 1973, was the undisputed queen of TV in the early- and mid-1970s but still wanted more out of her career.
Despite Fawcett’s close association with “Angels,” she was only a regular for that first season, and appeared in 29 episodes between 1976 and 1980.
Even though she was a bona fide small-screen star, Fawcett desperately sought big-screen success and dumped “Angels” for a series of box-office flops.
Fawcett often told friends privately she’d trade all her TV glory for just one landmark movie role, like those enjoyed by boyfriend and “Love Story” star O’Neal.
She won a measure of gravitas with decidedly unglamorous roles in “Burning Bed” in 1984 and “Extremities” in 1986. In both movies, Fawcett played victimized women who rose up against their brutal attackers.
Fawcett also wasn’t adverse to taking risks in her art — with varying degrees of success.
In June 1997, Fawcett gave a famous, rambling, interview to David Letterman, as she promoted an avant-garde art project for Playboy where she smeared her naked body with paint and hurled herself into a canvas.
Off the screen, Fawcett’s romantic travails and domestic discord became sensational tabloid fodder — and the TV icon hated that unwanted attention.
After divorcing the “Six Million Dollar Man” Majors in 1982, Fawcett hooked up with O’Neal for a years-long, on-again, off-again relationship.
In between her romances with O’Neal, Fawcett had a brief, tumultuous relationship with director James Orr. She claimed Orr once slammed her head on the asphalt, splitting her head open.
Jurors in Santa Monica, Calif., in 1998 found Orr guilty of misdemeanor assault and he walked with just probation.
Fawcett and O’Neal had son Redmond O’Neal and the 24-year-old wild child has wilted under the light of his famous parents.
His years-long struggle with drugs led Redmond O’Neal to his current home, a Los Angeles County lockup. He was busted for bringing drugs to a jail facility earlier this year when visiting a locked up pal.
Redmond O’Neal’s incarceration, as his mother slipped away from cancer, sparked a heart-wrenching scene in “Farrah’s Story,” when L.A. Sheriff’s deputies granted him an hours-long, supervised release in late April.
Wearing his jail garb, Redmond O’Neal gently crawled into bed with his mom in hopes of not making any sound from his leg chains.
Redmond O’Neal and his dad wanted to hide the son’s confinement from Farrah, who didn’t seem to notice.
“He was told this morning” about his mom’s death, said LA County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore.
“He was told last night that death was imminent. His dad called him again this morning and informed him.”
Redmond O’Neal did not speak to his mom last night or this morning so the jailbird’s final words to Fawcett were spoken during that April visit. The wild child was being comforted by a jail chaplain and grief counselor today.
“If we get court direction to allow him to attend the funeral, then that will be done,” Whitmore said.
Fawcett’s hatred of supermarket tabloids carried on to the bitter end.
She was enraged by a National Enquirer headline in December 2006 that read: “Farrah Begs: ‘Let Me Die.’
“God I would never say something like that,” said Fawcett, who tore up a copy of the tab on “Farrah’s Story.”
“To think that people who did look up to me and felt positive because I was going through it too and yet I was strong … it just negated all that.”
But even a month before “Farrah’s Story” aired, the blonde beauty admitted the years of aggressive treatment had finally worn her down.
“I feel like a dog who has been to the vet too many times,” she candidly said.