Year After Her Death, Farah Fawcett Foundation Gets a Home

The Farrah Fawcett Foundation is dedicated to alternative cancer research methods

Farrah Fawcett, who died one year ago, will be remembered Friday for more than just her iconic poster.

Her best friend Alana Stewart -- ex-wife of singer Rod Stewart -- is  expected to open offices in Beverly Hills for the Farrah Fawcett  Foundation, which is dedicated to finding alternative methods of treating  cancer. The foundation has an emphasis on anal and pediatric cancers.

Details about the  opening were unavailable early Friday.

The foundation was started years ago, but Fawcett was unable to devote much time to it because of her illness, USA Today reported.

"We're officially opening the offices on Friday, the one-year anniversary of her passing," Stewart told USA Today. "I think it's very fitting. I think it's what she would have wanted."

Fawcett died at age 62 of complications from anal cancer about 9:30 a.m.  -- about two hours before Michael Jackson died. And because her death was  widely anticipated -- she was diagnosed in 2006 -- most of the news coverage focused on Jackson.

Longtime boyfriend Ryan O'Neal and the couple's son, Redmond, served as  pallbearers at her funeral. Both were in trouble with drugs at the time, but  Ryan is now said to be sober, and Redmond, 25, is being treated for drug  addiction.

Though the poster image of the "Charlie's Angels" remain an icon of the 1970s, Fawcett  also is remembered as an actress who demonstrated her dramatic chops in the  1984 television movie "The Burning Bed" and the film "Extremities" in 1986.

A native of Corpus Christi, Texas, Fawcett had a series of bit parts on  television in the early 1970s, including spots on "The Partridge Family," "I  Dream of Jeannie," "Marcus Welby, M.D." and "S.W.A.T.," but she became an  American cultural icon when she starred as private investigator Jill Munroe in  the mid-1970s hit "Charlie's Angels."

Her feathered blonde hair became her trademark, and Fawcett -- then  known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors, thanks to her marriage to "Six Million Dollar  Man'' actor Lee Majors -- became a fixture on thousands of American bedroom  walls with her signature poster, in which she wore a bright smile and a red one- piece swimsuit.

Despite earning a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a drama  series, Fawcett was unhappy with her contract and left the series after one  season in 1977. But a court battle with the show's producers ensued, resulting  in Fawcett's return to the series for guest spots over the next two seasons.  She left the show for good in 1980.

She appeared in the Burt Reynolds comedy "The Cannonball Run" in 1981,  and also made a series of made-for-television movies. She made a triumphant  return to television as a battered housewife in the 1984 movie "The Burning  Bed," which earned her Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. The role made her a  vocal advocate, bringing awareness to the plight of abuse victims.
 

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