What Farrah Fawcett's Partners & Ex-Boyfriends Have Said About Her

When Farrah Fawcett hit Hollywood, she was a bonafide sensation. The oh-so '70s Farrah Fawcett hairstyle was all the rage, and her legendary red swimsuit poster broke sales records at the time. In addition to being a generational beauty, she was also an incredibly talented and beloved actor. A charismatic and endearing performer through and through, she rose to superstardom playing Jill Munroe on one season of "Charlie's Angels." Behind the scenes, she was known for being a caring, hard-working, and tenacious person. Unsurprisingly, when she died in 2009, the tributes from colleagues and loved ones poured in. As Patrick O'Neal, son of Fawcett's longtime partner Ryan O'Neal, told Vanity Fair, "I have never met anybody more sweet or kind than Farrah, and I loved her."

Over the course of her decades-spanning career, Fawcett's personal life made its way into tabloids, and not just because of her relationship with Ryan O'Neal. She had a few long-term romances, both in Hollywood and before she became a celebrity. Here's what all of Farrah Fawcett's partners and ex-boyfriends have said about the screen icon.

Before she hit it big with "Charlie's Angels," Farrah Fawcett was married to the Six Million Dollar Man himself, actor Lee Majors. Fawcett had been in a few movies and TV shows before she met Majors, and evidently, he was smitten before they were ever formally introduced. "Lee's publicist showed my photograph to him and he called me up and said he'd like to meet me," Fawcett said in an interview with The Australian Women's Weekly in 1977. "When he called, I was all prepared to turn him down. But I changed my mind when he said he was sorry. We've been together ever since," she added, noting that she found him rude and didn't want to go out with him at first.

The pair got married in 1973, and while at the beginning of their relationship the two were smitten and Majors seemed to be willing to do anything to make Fawcett happy, their respective careers made things difficult. Fawcett was a rising star (the first season of "Charlie's Angels" was an instant smash after it debuted in 1976) and Majors was busy with his own acting career ("The Six Million Dollar Man" ran from 1974 to 1978), making for two very conflicting schedules. "There was a year or so when I think I saw her two weeks in one year. It's very difficult with careers like that. This business is tough. Working 14 hours a day, both of you, and the days went by," Majors said of his relationship with Fawcett in a 2019 interview with People.

"The Six Million Dollar Man" and "Charlie's Angels" were two of the most popular TV shows of the decade. Lee Majors being the lead in the former show made him a full-blown superstar, and although Farrah Fawcett was only a star on "Charlie's Angels" for the first season, her star only continued to rise. Unsurprisingly, the relationship between two A-listers was of high interest to the public, and Majors and Fawcett, a true '70s power couple, could feel it. "It was quite the extreme. It was probably like Brad and Jennifer when they were together. The press was all over us ... Naturally we really couldn't go anywhere," Majors said in a 2013 interview with Fox News.

Eventually their conflicting schedules proved to be too much. In 1979, Majors and Fawcett separated. The split was public knowledge, but Fawcett was reluctant to discuss what was happening in her marriage at the time. In a 1979 interview, she famously firmly told a reporter she wouldn't be discussing the separation, though she did note that there was hope for reconciliation. "When Lee married me, he married a very compliant person who just wanted to cook his meals, clean his house and be dependent. I still like to cook his meals and clean his house, but I'm not dependent anymore. I feel so bad for Lee. I care about him so much, and he is trying to be understanding and protecting," Fawcett said to People of their separation.

Unfortunately, the two didn't reconcile, and by 1982, Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors officially divorced. "She was off doing films and stuff, and doing her series, and I was doing mine. That's mainly the reason we got divorced; we never saw each other. We stayed great friends, but we just had our own careers going and didn't have time for each other," Lee said in an interview with TV Mirror (via Woman's World). After the two split up, they both moved on. Fawcett went on to have multiple relationships, as did Lee, with the "Scrooged" actor marrying Karen Velez in 1988. The two had three children together before divorcing in 1994. That same decade, Lee met his current wife, Faith Majors.

Though his marriage to Fawcett didn't pan out, Lee still cared for her. "I love Farrah and I always will," he said after their divorce, per People. And after Fawcett tragically died of cancer in 2009, Lee told the magazine, "She fought a tremendous battle against a terrible disease. She was an angel on earth and now an angel forever." 

Lee still seemingly looks back at much of his relationship with Fawcett with fondness. In a 2019 interview with People, Lee boasted about the role he had in Fawcett's infamous red bathing suit photo. "I picked out the poster. The famous one! I picked out the picture. You probably don't know why! That's the biggest selling poster ever," he said.

After Farrah Fawcett's relationship with Lee Majors came to an end, the "Charlie's Angels" star didn't stay single for long. Fawcett began dating actor Ryan O'Neal in 1979, the same year Fawcett separated from Majors, and the two first met while Fawcett was still married to Majors. After a chance encounter in Toronto between O'Neal and Majors, Fawcett's then-husband invited O'Neal to his and Fawcett's Los Angeles home. O'Neal knew who Fawcett was, but he wasn't familiar with "Charlie's Angels." When he met the actor, he was immediately taken. "There she was in the driveway. My god, she was breathtaking," O'Neal said on "The Late Late Show" in 2015.

During their first meeting, O'Neal felt that Fawcett's marriage was crumbling, and he was interested in her. A few weeks after they first met, while Majors was away for work, O'Neal invited Fawcett to a Ry Cooder concert, and Fawcett and O'Neal were together from that point on. Although it started at the end of the decade, Fawcett and O'Neal's relationship became one of the messiest celebrity affairs of the 1970s. But the pair were madly in love. "I lost interest in nearly everything but this woman. For the first time in my life, something took precedence over myself," O'Neal said of Fawcett to the New York Daily News (via People). "Ryan is the most honest person I know. He's helped me be more independent by being the greatest ego booster I've ever had. I think our personalities are well suited," Fawcett told People in 1981.

Those who witnessed Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal's relationship sure seemed to believe that the two were passionately in love. However, that passion didn't always manifest in a positive way. In Ryan's 2012 memoir about his romance with Fawcett, "Both of Us: My Life with Farrah," he shared that he and Fawcett sometimes had very intense and volatile fights, and their tumultuous dynamic was especially hard on their son, Redmond O'Neal.

But time and time again, Fawcett and Ryan reconciled. "Ryan was the love of her life, and she, his. Whether they had a fight or were back together, it was always Ryan. The father of your child. Connected forever," Fawcett's "Charlie's Angels" co-star Jaclyn Smith said to People in 2019. 

Fawcett and Ryan initially stayed together for 17 years, never marrying but, as noted, they did share one child. They separated for about four years in the late '90s, but eventually got back together. "Ryan was the love of her life. I don't think she was happy without him. They fought and loved with passion. It was never boring. They were electric together," Fawcett's friend Sylvia Dorsey told People of the couple.

Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett's reunion four years after their breakup came about due to tragic circumstances. In 2001, the two got back together after O'Neal learned he had leukemia. Fawcett would then learn that she had cancer, and O'Neal stayed by her side until her death in 2009. "She never closed her eyes; her eyes were open for the last three weeks of her life. She was watching us. She didn't speak much, but she watched us. And then, finally, she closed her eyes," O'Neal told Meredith Viera on "Today." "I think she was holding on. I didn't think she wanted to go. She had things left on her plate to finish, to accomplish." In a separate conversation with People given in the wake of Fawcett's death,  he said, "I loved her with all my heart. I will miss her so very, very much."

As noted, O'Neal published a memoir about his relationship with Fawcett, and he kept her memory alive in a variety of other ways, speaking about her often. After Fawcett's passing, it was revealed that O'Neal had asked her to marry him just a few weeks before she died. Those close to the duo believed that they would've wed had Fawcett lived long enough. "The two of them had a deep bond and deep love. No matter what they went through, the ups and downs, he was the one she wanted by her side," Fawcett's friend Alana Stewart told People. O'Neal lived another decade after Fawcett died, and he seemingly never had another romantic relationship. O'Neal died in 2023 from congestive heart failure.

Long before she was rubbing elbows with stars like Lee Majors or Ryan O'Neal, Farrah Fawcett dated a man named Greg Lott. Fawcett and Lott met while both were college students at the University of Texas at Austin. Lott was a football star, and Fawcett was a true "it girl" at school. "When you were with her, it was like you were next to a bright light. There was simply no one else like her," Lott said in a 2014 interview for Texas Monthly. Their relationship ended when Fawcett dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles. She became a star, and Lott fell on hard times and ended up in prison twice.

Eventually, Lott moved on. After his second stint in prison, Fawcett's ex got married and started a business. But he kept tabs on Fawcett (not that it was hard to), and after he spoke about their relationship with Texas Monthly in the late '90s, the two apparently reconnected. 

In the interview, Lott stated that neither Majors nor O'Neal were good enough for Fawcett; around the time the 1997 Texas Monthly story was published, Fawcett and O'Neal broke up. The interview reportedly prompted Fawcett to call Lott, and the two got back together, and she even thanked the author of the interview for reuniting them. The duo was never spotted out and about together, though. "She didn't like going out. The crush from her fans was so huge it was like being with Elvis," Lott said in the 2014 Texas Monthly feature.

According to Greg Lott, his relationship with Farrah Fawcett apparently continued until the end of her life. "Farrah Fawcett and I reunited ... in a relationship, a loving, consensual, one-on-one relationship," he told ABC News in 2013. Per public record, of course, Fawcett was in a committed relationship with Ryan O'Neal. Lott, however, had a different story. "Everything she did with Ryan, including all of those so-called reality shows they made together, was just Hollywood fantasy, something she had to do to keep up her image. ... She despised what he had done to her. Her heart was always with me," Lott claimed in Texas Monthly. Fawcett seemed to have at least some affection for Lott. The former football player shared some letters he'd received from Fawcett, with one saying, "You are my North, my South, my East, my West, and you know the rest. I love you forever and more."

O'Neal wasn't quite so convinced about this supposed love affair that was kept out of the public eye until after her death. Per Lott, when Fawcett was dying from cancer, Lott tried to visit and call her, but O'Neal wouldn't allow it. Lott even said he went to Los Angeles a few months after Fawcett's funeral and got into it with O'Neal in the middle of a street. When O'Neal told Lott that Fawcett did not want Lott to visit or call, Lott reportedly fired back, "You're a liar! She was the love of my life!" 

The Farrah Fawcett and Greg Lott messiness doesn't end there. Lott's claims regarding the nature of his relationship with Fawcett only were brought to the public's attention because he was included in a lawsuit between the University of Texas at Austin and Ryan O'Neal. Per Fawcett's living trust, her art collection was to be given to UT upon her death, including two Andy Warhol portraits of Fawcett. O'Neal maintained that one of the paintings actually was given to him, so it was his to keep. In 2012, UT sued the actor.

The school and O'Neal's dispute was taken to court in 2013, and UT brought Lott in as a witness testifying that her wishes were as stated in her living trust. (Lott reportedly was the one who tipped the school off about the second portrait.) Ahead of the verdict, Lott said to Inside Edition, "I hope that everything he's taken from her will be taken from him, and her wishes will be served." (According to Cher, another wish of Fawcett's went unfulfilled because of O'Neal). Ultimately, though, O'Neal won the legal battle, the second Warhol stayed out of Texas, and Lott's account was all but shrugged off. "He met her back in college and never got over her. His life has been stuck ever since," an attorney for the University of Texas said of Lott in court, per Texas Monthly.  

"He is a coward and a liar,"  Lott said of O'Neal, per ABC News. "He kept me from seeing the love of my life before she died. Photos don't make a relationship. I know what I had with her. He didn't have that. He blew it."