Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett was an American actress and artist. A fourtime Emmy Award nominee and sixtime Golden Globe Award nominee, Fawcett rose to international fame when she posed for her iconic red swimsuit poster which became the best selling pinup poster in history and starred as private investigator Jill Munroe in the first season of the television series Charlies Angels . In 1996, she was ranked No.on TV Guides 50 Greatest TV stars of AllTime.
Fawcett was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, the younger of two daughters. Her mother, Pauline Alice Fawcett , was a homemaker, and her father, James William Fawcett , was an oil field contractor. Her elder sister was Diane Fawcett Walls , a graphic artist. She was of Irish, French, English and Choctaw Native American ancestry. Fawcett once said the name Farrah was made up by her mother because it went well with their last name. Another theory is that her father, an oilman, reportedly named her Farah for the Arabic word for joy, and she reportedly asked to change the spelling to Farrah.
Source: Wikipedia