The ObserverDocumentary films This article is more than 14 years old

As Charlie's Angels star lies dying, she begs for camera to keep rolling

This article is more than 14 years oldAn unflinching documentary of Farrah Fawcett's
long struggle with a terminal illness, filmed by
her best friend, has been tipped for an Emmy

Farrah Fawcett, the 70s television star and sex symbol, wants to live her life on camera until the very end. That is why the actress has allowed her best friend, Alana Stewart, to film even the rawest moments of her battle with terminal cancer – including one when she writhed in agony, clutching a rosary, in a hospital bed.

"She was projectile vomiting and she looks up at me and says, 'Why aren't you filming this? This is what cancer is'," a tearful Stewart recounts in the harrowing film, Farrah's Story, which aired in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Now commentators in America are saying the heartrending documentary – effectively Fawcett's curtain call – could result in an Emmy for the actress, named as an executive producer. It is an industry honour that has eluded her so far.

Fawcett, who soared to fame as the blonde bombshell private eye in the original Charlie's Angels TV series, appears close to death in the final scenes of the film, so ill and sedated that she doesn't recognise her own son.
Her longtime companion, film star Ryan O'Neal, is seen on camera sobbing and shaking as he says: "We had all ­better brace ourselves."

Fawcett first began a simple video diary of her treatment in the early days after she was diagnosed with a rare anal cancer in September 2006.
But it soon turned into an extraordinary, unsparing record of a painful two-and-a-half-year rollercoaster ride of hopes raised and dashed repeatedly throughout gruelling treatments.

Fawcett turned the project into a documentary after fellow cancer sufferers urged her to go public with her fight in an effort to highlight the need for early detection and more research.

There are hopeful moments in the film and Fawcett shows incredible resilience, but even as she vows to fight on the tale becomes progressively bleaker. The 62-year-old is shown most recently in bed at home, barely conscious under a heap of bedclothes, after O'Neal said she had "pretty much" stopped receiving treatment. He said he would wake her up to watch the documentary.

After many treatments had caused her agony but spared what her Los Angeles doctor Lawrence Piro called "the most famous hair in the world", Fawcett is seen late in the film with her hair falling out in clumps. She shaves most of it off, then shows her head to the camera, bald but for a remaining blond fringe.

The actresses who played her fellow "Angels" in the 1976 series, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, are both shown rallying around their former co-star. "Hair or no hair, she is Farrah and I never heard her complain once," says Smith.

Fawcett opens the film by saying to camera: "In September 2006 I heard three words I thought I would never hear – malignant, tumour and anal." She underwent intense chemotherapy and radiotherapy and was declared cancer-free in February of the following year. But in May 2007 there was grim news. "That's when I heard the fourth word I never thought I would hear – recurrence," Fawcett tells the camera.

She films a roomful of nervous doctors telling her that a peanut-sized tumour in her rectum had spread cancer cells to her liver. "Suddenly there were nine tumours in my liver," she says.

The LA doctors could not operate on the original tumour without a colostomy. So Fawcett is documented beginning multiple trips to Germany for delicate surgery and several alternative chemotherapies and laser treatment on the liver tumours.

Stewart films the excruciating procedures as surgeons push long needles through her rib cartilage to inject chemicals directly into the liver tumours. Fawcett groans and cringes in pain. O'Neal stands quietly weeping nearby. "I'm scared. Farrah taught me how to live," O'Neal sobs.

He has been her on-off boyfriend since they got together in 1982.
In her Charlie's Angels days she was Farrah Fawcett-Majors – married to Lee Majors, who played a bionic man in the equally popular science fiction TV show Six Million Dollar Man. They separated in 1979 and there is no mention of him in the documentary.

But O'Neal, whose biggest screen hit was the 1970 blockbuster Love Story, is now her constant companion. "I've loved her more these last years than ever... she doesn't want anyone to pity her or worry. She puts up a brave fight as if everything is fine, when it's not," said O'Neal.

Fawcett also had to battle the gossip sheets after a hospital insider sold copies of her medical records to the National Enquirer tabloid.

At the height of her fame, Fawcett posed for a cheesy but iconic swimsuit poster that became synonymous with American glamour and sold 12m copies worldwide. Less well known is that after Charlie's Angels she had a respectable movie career and won acclaim for stage acting off Broadway in New York.

The irony of a famous sex symbol suffering from what many regard as an unmentionable type of cancer may be bitter, but Fawcett breaks barriers by being the anal cancer sufferer prepared to bare herself on camera. She is seen flying back and forth to Germany, at times joking, at others wrapped pathetically in a blanket and injecting herself with painkillers, or being pushed in a wheelchair through the airport with a bowl on her lap to vomit into.
Satirist PJ O'Rourke suffered the same cancer, but has been successfully treated so far. He wrote wittily about it and called it "ass cancer".

Fawcett does not reveal if she knows what caused her cancer. Most cases of anal cancer are sparked by the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus. Smoking can also be a factor.

Fawcett is seen in the documentary cele­brating with whoops of joy and a Mexican holiday a year ago, after treatment breakthroughs prompted her German doctors to call her a walking miracle. But it was short-lived. She sobs on camera when a scan last summer showed a new tumour in her anus and fresh tumours in her liver. "I feel like a dog who has been to the vet too many times," Fawcett says weakly as last-ditch surgery in Germany and trial treatments in LA fail.

Her 91-year-old father Jim flew in from Texas earlier this month, reportedly to bid her goodbye.

Meanwhile, it had been kept from Fawcett that her son with Ryan O'Neal, Redmond, 24, was in jail on charges of possessing heroin.

Just days ago, Dr Piro wrote to the judge in Redmond's case asking if he could be released to see his mother for what might be the last time.
Redmond O'Neal is seen on camera in his prison jumpsuit, having his handcuffs taken off by an accompanying guard, but remaining shackled at the ankles as he bends close to his mother over the bed and says: "Mommy? It's Redmond. It's your son."

When asked if she had recognised him, he says: "I hope so."
Fawcett finishes the documentary with a commentary explaining its purpose, recorded before she became bedridden, and asking: "Why is there not more research into certain types of cancer? Why doesn't our health system embrace alternative treatments that have proved successful in other countries? I have got cancer, but I'm alive. What are you fighting for?"
Celebrities and friends who attended a screening were in tears. "It's intense. Everyone should see this film," said actress Melanie Griffith as she dabbed her eyes.

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