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Article Excerpt
Byline: by Alana Stewart
Men come and go - God knows they certainly have in my life - but girlfriends are for ever. I have a lot of girlfriends but only a few very, very close ones. And in the middle of that select circle, I considered Farrah Fawcett to be my soul-sister. We would have done anything for each other. But I never anticipated that our lives would become intertwined in the way that they did. I never imagined I would walk this path with her.
The first time I laid eyes on Farrah was in the Seventies. We hadn't formally met yet, but I spotted her on a commercial audition and thought she was absolutely beautiful (she later told me she thought the same about me). We both arrived in LA around the same time. She came straight from Corpus Christi, Texas, and I had been modelling in New York and Paris. We kept bumping into each other at these casting calls, and at first our friendship was casual: a smile, a nod, a quick 'How's it going?'
A few years later, we were no longer just girls hustling for work in Hollywood. By then, I was separated from my first husband, George Hamilton, and had been acting in a few TV series, while Farrah was a huge star, an icon, thanks to Charlie's Angels. I went to Palm Springs to play in a celebrity tennis tournament with my friend Valerie Perrine and when we arrived there were young kids lined up outside the tennis club, screaming Farrah's name.
Truth be told, Valerie and I had no business being there. We couldn't even play tennis! We'd bought the shortest tennis shorts we could find, hoping they would distract people from how bad we were. Each of us had a pro partner, and I pitied the poor guy who got me.
When a ball came sailing at me, I dived for the ground narrowly missing getting smacked in the head. Farrah, on the other hand, was a powerful and graceful tennis player, a natural athlete, and, of course, she won the tournament while barely breaking a sweat.
How easy it would have been to hate someone so seemingly perfect, but all you could do was love her. She was so warm, so approachable, so down-toearth. People were just naturally drawn to her like moths to a bright flame. We met again and really bonded in 1979 when I was pregnant with my daughter Kimberly and married to my second husband, Rod Stewart.
Rod and I were at film producer Countess Marina Cicogna's house for a dinner, and she sat Farrah, her future partner Ryan O'Neal, Rod, and me together. Farrah and I hit it off immediately, and quickly discovered that we had a lot in common, especially our Texas roots. We also discovered another interesting connection: we were both part American-Indian. I'm a one-quarter Cherokee-Choctaw mix, and Farrah was part Choctaw.
What I loved about Farrah from day one was that there was no BS. What you saw was what you got, and I found that refreshing - an actual down-home girl in Hollywood.
After that dinner, we started up a real friendship. She was working so much in those days that we couldn't spend a lot of time together but when we did we had a ball. Being around her felt like being home in Texas. We used to joke that all we needed were the big pink rollers in our hair.
We'd go down to Ryan's beach house, get massages, manicures and pedicures and lie in the sun reading fashion magazines - just two friends forgetting about life for 24 hours. We hung out, we ate Tex-Mex, we baked homemade pies. Farrah was always such fun. She embraced life more than anyone I've ever known.
Over the years, there was rarely a birthday party or a New Year's that we didn't celebrate together. As time went on, Farrah and I became even closer, even as our lives took very different paths. I got married and was busy having babies (Kimberly, Sean and Ashley), while she had the kind of thriving acting career I had always dreamed about. In 1984, when Rod and I broke up, Farrah and Ryan were there to comfort and support me.
In 1986, before her son Redmond was born, I threw her baby shower. But through it all, she stayed the same Farrah. She raised her son without a nanny, helping him with his homework...
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