Farrah Fawcett dies at 62

The iconic TV actress Farrah Fawcett, whose red bathing suit poster adorned teenage boys' bedroom walls across the world in the late 1970s, and whose tousled blonde hair was copied by girls everywhere, has died of cancer in Los Angeles at the age of 62. She had been battling the disease since 2006.

It is not yet known whether her long-term partner Ryan O'Neal was able to marry her before her death. He had vowed to do so during a recent television interview with Barbara Walters.

"I used to ask her to marry me all the time," he told Walters. "But it just got to be a joke, you know."

Fawcett made her name as one of the Charlie's Angels trio and was married at the time to Lee Majors, the star of an equally famous series of the period, The Six Million

Dollar Man. She met O'Neal, famous for his film roles in Love Story and What's Up, Doc?, in 1982 after her break-up with Majors.

After Charlie's Angels, she went on to make more serious TV films and won a string of Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

Fawcett was first diagnosed with rectal cancer in 2006. She travelled to Germany for experimental treatment, but the cancer ended up spreading to her liver. When her chemotherapy sessions ended last month, she returned home to the Malibu home she shared with O'Neal.