Friend shares insider’s look at Fawcett’s battle

Alana Stewart, who was Farrah Fawcett’s close friend, helped provide moral support to the actress while she fought cancer. During that time, Stewart kept a diary that has now been published as a book, “My Journey With Farrah.” An excerpt.

Introduction
Men come and go — God knows they certainly have in my life — but girlfriends are forever. 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 soulsister. 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 1970s. 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 L.A. around the same time. She came straight from Corpus Christi, Texas, and I had been modeling 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 pity the poor guy who got me. When a ball came sailing at me, I dove 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-to-earth. People were just naturally drawn to her — myself included — 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 Countess Marina Cicogna’s house for a dinner, and she sat Farrah, Ryan, 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. Farrah’s mother always said the Choctaw were the lazy Indians! I’ve heard that if you’re from the same tribe, you have a blood tie; maybe that’s why we eventually became so spiritually connected.

Ultimately, 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 twenty-four 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 and cooking dinner almost every night. As we got older, and Redmond and my sons all struggled with drug and alcohol problems, she and I bonded even more in our pain and concern over our boys. In the beginning of our relationship, Farrah was private and guarded with her emotions; eventually we could talk about anything.

Farrah was the last person I ever thought would get cancer. It never remotely crossed my mind that such a thing would happen. She was always too strong, too healthy, too full of life. I always thought she was one of the most fortunate women I knew. She had it all — or so it seemed. Life is fragile; it changes in a heartbeat. One day Farrah was fine, the next she was not. Yet through it all, I never heard her question “Why me?” I never saw her act like a victim. She made the decision to fight her cancer and never wavered. It was very hard — sometimes unbearable — to watch my friend suffer, but I was in awe of her ferocious determination. Sometimes I thought it was her stubbornness and sheer willpower that got her through it. Other times I marveled at her heroism in waging war with an enemy who gave no hint as to where it might attack next — or how much it would destroy in its path. We went to Germany together to try and find a cure, a miracle, some hope in the face of hopelessness. And it was there that my friend handed me her camera and asked me to video what she was going through. I had no idea how to use a camera, and she showed me how to press the little RECORD button. So it began.

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