Farrah Fawcett, sex symbol and actress, dies

clipped from www.cnn.com

(CNN) -- Farrah Fawcett, the blonde-maned actress whose best-selling poster and "Charlie's Angels" stardom made her one of the most famous faces in the world, has died. She was 62.

Fawcett, who checked into a Los Angeles, California, hospital in early April, had been battling anal cancer on and off for three years.

Ryan O'Neal, Fawcett's romantic partner since the mid-1980s, recently told People magazine that the sex symbol was declining.

Fawcett was a model best known for bit parts, commercials and as "Six Million Dollar Man" actor Lee Majors' wife when she shot the poster in early 1976 at the behest of Pro Arts, a Cleveland, Ohio, company.

In recent years, Fawcett has appeared sporadically in the public eye. She posed nude for Playboy in 1995. In 1997, she appeared on "The Late Show with David Letterman," an interview that became notorious for Fawcett's apparent incoherence. She later said she was just having fun with Letterman.

She was diagnosed with cancer in 2006.