LOS ANGELES – For “Charlie’s Angels” TV legend Jaclyn Smith, looking back over her life for her memoir is still taking an emotional toll.
Even detailing a loving Houston upbringing, superstar 1970s fame with “Charlie’s Angels,” a pioneering fashion empire, motherhood and a lasting (fourth) marriage also meant revisiting painful chapters for “I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie: A Memoir”
(out now from Simon & Schuster, Gallery Books).Speaking from the sprawling Georgian-style Beverly Hills home where she has lived for 35 years, Smith, 80, says those powerful memories resurfaced again in the studio when she recorded her memoir's audiobook.
“I was crying so much sometimes that we’d have to stop,” Smith tells USA TODAY. “It was difficult and exhausting.
You think you’re at a certain place and you go right back there.”
Smith says she's been working on the memoir since long before this year's 50th anniversary celebrations around “Charlie’s Angels,” producer Aaron Spelling's pop-culture phenomenon that began its famed five-season ABC run on Sept. 22, 1976. The reflection stirred up the powerful memories of playing impossibly glamorous private detective Kelly Garrett alongside Farrah Fawcett's Jill Munroe and Kate Jackson's Sabrina Duncan.
“I've been working on this book for a long time, but I've stopped since it was so hard,” says Smith, the only original Angel to remain on the case – and answer to the mysterious, disembodied voice of detective agency owner Charlie (never-seen actor John Forsythe) – for all five seasons.
Smith was “disappointed” when Fawcett-Majors, then married to “The Six Million Dollar Man” '70s superstar Lee Majors, left “Charlie’s Angels” after the first season, sending shockwaves through the pre-internet world. But Smith understood the decision and remained lifelong friends with Fawcett – as well as with Fawcett’s full-time TV replacement, Cheryl Ladd, who played Jill Munroe’s younger sister, Kris, for the show’s final four seasons.
"There wasn't a normal success with that show. All of a sudden they wanted you for every magazine cover," says Smith, who appeared on Time magazine twice with her costars. "We were like rock stars. We had to have security and guards. That bonded us. Farrah and I were Texas girls. Kate was from Alabama. It was suddenly very different. We were truly friends that first season."
Jackson is godmother to Smith’s daughter, Spencer Margaret Richmond, born in 1985 to Smith and her third husband, British cinematographer Tony Richmond. Smith returned the honor as godmother to Jackson’s son, Charles Taylor Jackson, whom Jackson adopted in 1995.
The original TV Angels were bonded by experiencing instant stardom together – and all the perils that came with it – along with high-profile individual battles with cancer. Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, discovered during a routine mammogram, undergoing a lumpectomy and radiation.
When Ladd was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, revealed in 2026, Smith began sending over wigs of varying lengths. That support started after Ladd sent her bald photos from the oral chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
"She'd send me pictures and say, 'Now destroy these pictures. I don't have any hair,'" says Smith. "I thought, 'How brave of her.' But that's called trust. She trusted me with everything. And she looked beautiful even then."
Two-time breast cancer survivor Jackson, 77, was the first of the Angels diagnosed, battling the disease in 1987 and again in 1989, when she underwent a partial mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006 and declared cancer-free in early 2007. But the cancer returned and spread to her liver.
Fawcett presented Smith with a bronze sculpture she had made the Christmas before she died in June 2009, possibly of her own torso. The artwork sits prominently in Smith's sun-filled living room. It was accompanied by a deeply personal letter that Smith highlights fully in her memoir for the first time.
"She said that fear is a funny thing," Smith says of Farrah's letter. "She wrote, 'I have never feared anything; now fear is around the corner.' There was no control around this one. You live in this limbo state of fear."
Fawcett was "brave" through the end and handled her challenges with "hope, a positive attitude and humor," says Smith. "Farrah never lost that sense of humor, but it was devastating to see what she had to go through."
At the time, Smith was caught between two heartbreaking crises – Fawcett’s final battle with cancer in Los Angeles and the failing health of her beloved mother, Margaret “Mimi” Smith, in Houston. During her last visit to Fawcett, Smith brought over Pinkberry and rubbed her friend's sore feet "for hours." When they hugged goodbye, Smith felt an energy pass between them.
"When you're close to somebody it's all about the energy," says Smith. "With a hug, you feel their energy and you feel part of them."
Smith was caring for her mother when Fawcett died; “Mimi” Smith died Aug. 17, 2009, at 95, less than two months after Fawcett.
Jaclyn Smith on Farrah Fawcett: 'Charisma doesn't need a second season'
Smith has remained close to the other Angels, including Shelley Hack, who replaced Kate Jackson as Tiffany Welles for the show’s fourth season, and Tanya Roberts, who replaced Hack as Julie Rogers for the fifth and final season (and died in 2021). All of these relationships have pushed their way back into Smith's consciousness around the anniversary discussion, along with events such as a Paley-fest April reunion with Ladd and Jackson.
"Shelley and Tanya are on my mind. But of course, there's Farrah," says Smith. "I was closer to Farrah. She is very much a part of this (50th celebration) with Kate and I because we loved her so much. Charisma doesn't need a second season."
Smith, who played Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in her favorite role, the 1981 TV movie “Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy,”has been an outspoken cancer advocate, urging women to undergo regular mammograms and emphasizing the importance of early detection.
The appreciation of life and the fear of the disease remain with her today.
"When you hear the word cancer, it stops you in your tracks." says Smith. "You think, 'My God, how fragile life is. And it can be taken from you in a second.' You have to enjoy every moment. I'm grateful every single day."
The proud mother revels in her two grown children, son Gaston and daughter Spencer Margaret, and three granddaughters, Bea, Olivia Rose and Wren.She lives in her longtime Beverly Hills home with cardiothoracic and pediatric heart surgeon Brad Allen, her husband of nearly 29 years.
"I would have had a totally other life if it hadn't been for 'Charlie's Angels'" says Smith. "I call it a very famous chapter. I've loved every minute of it. I really have. Life is surprising. It's been a beautiful journey."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jaclyn Smith recalls final Farrah Fawcett meeting before 'Charlie's Angels' star's death
