Farrah: 'America's Ideal of Itself'

Farrah Fawcett’s time as a superstar may have been short, but she played her entire life—and career—with grace, Richard Corliss writes in Time. And no one can forget her 1970s heyday. “If the big, bulky computers of the day could have programmed America’s ideal of itself,” Corliss writes, “shiny, confident, radiating pleasure, promising not so very much—Fawcett would have been the printout.”

“Boy, did the 1970s ever need Farrah Fawcett.” But once America had had enough, Fawcett’s fame waned and she did something spectacular: “She changed careers and became an actress.” And though she spent time as a tabloid sensation, Corliss writes, “any actress—and Fawcett fooled her fans by becoming an excellent one—can find an arc of redemption through suffering.” (More Farrah Fawcett stories.)