Farrah's legacy

What sad news about Farrah Fawcett, who died of cancer earlier today. She will always be remembered for her appearances on "Charlie's Angels" and for her legendary swimsuit poster, of course. But Fawcett should also be celebrated for the courage and fortitude she displayed when she decided to establish herself as a serious actress in the early 1980s, half a decade after her days as the world's best-known sex symbol.

Often hailed as an "overnight success," Fawcett was anything but. She had arrived in Hollywood at the dawn of the 1970s and toiled in bit parts in movies and TV shows and did many a commercial in the years before she took the world by storm as Jill Munroe, the most outgoing and vivacious of the Angels, in 1976. While "Charlie's Angels" and that classic poster made her a household name, they didn't assure her any sort of staying power. Nor were producers pushing aside Jane Fonda, Jill Clayburgh and Meryl Streep in their rush to give Fawcett (then known as Fawcett-Majors) world-class movie roles. When she wasn't filming an "Angels" episode, she could be found doing guest shots on husband Lee Majors' series "The Six-Million Dollar Man" or playing for ABC on "Battle of the Network Stars." Suffice to say Fonda, Clayburgh and Streep probably weren't losing any sleep over that kind of competition.

In the spring of 1977, then-Fawcett-Majors shocked fans by announcing that she would not be returning for the second season of "Angels." Critics quickly divided into two camps: those who thought the series would expire quickly without her, and those who thought she was committing professional suicide.

"Angels" not only survived, it thrived: When Cheryl Ladd was brought in (as Jill's kid sister, Kris), ratings actually went up. Meanwhile, Fawcett-Majors found herself in a precarious place. Hoping to make her mark in movies, she signed on for a trio of projects -- "Somebody Killed Her Husband," a comic mystery with Jeff Bridges; "Sunburn," a caper comedy with Charles Grodin and Art Carney; and "Saturn 3," a sci-fi thriller with Kirk Douglas -- none of which brought in much at the box office. To settle legal battles with the "Angels" producers, Fawcett-Majors was forced to make multiple guest appearances on the show in the third and fourth seasons, which must have felt like salt in the wound.

By 1980, her career was in dire straits, but rather than fade away Fawcett turned her circumstances around. She had separated from Majors, who had reportedly tried to call the shots in both her personal and professional life, in 1979; they would divorce in 1982. Pushing her aside her glossy/fluffy image, Fawcett sought out serious, often disturbing material, such as the doomed wife in the well-reviewed TV mini-series "Murder in Texas." She then made the leap to off-Broadway, replacing Susan Sarandon in the hair-raising assault drama "Extremities," in which she played a woman who turns the tables on a would-be rapist and insists on exacting revenge. She would later reprise the role in the film version of the play.

"The Burning Bed," a harrowing made-for-TV drama about an abused wife who kills her husband in self-defense, cemented Fawcett's comeback, drawing a huge audience and netting her an Emmy nomination. Although she would occasionally dabble in film, Fawcett found her strongest showcases on television, playing opposite Colleen Dewhurst in "Between Two Women" and winning another Emmy nomination in 1989 as a troubled woman who shoots her own children in "Small Sacrifices."

Ten years after the industry had written her off as a has-been, Fawcett was an established actress with solid credentials. In retrospect, it's fascinating to see how many of her projects centered around characters who were fighting back (as in "Extremities" or "The Burning Bed"), fighting for justice (she played the title role in "Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story") or simply fighting for respect (in "Between Two Women," she plays a wife who is repeatedly snubbed and mocked by haughty mother-in-law Dewhurst, yet she's ultimately the one who takes charge when the mother-in-law faces a medical crisis). That kind of drive and determination must have struck a chord with Fawcett, who had weathered so much bad publicity and ridicule in the years after "Angels." She kept trying until she silenced the skeptics and put herself exactly where she wanted to be.

She may have lost her battle with cancer, but in my eyes Farrah Fawcett will always define what it means to be a survivor.