The poster girl for celebrity

But the reason for Fawcett’s popularity is bigger and more nebulous than her acting, her early sex-symbol status, and her position as one of TV’s pioneering action girls. She ultimately played one of the less easily defined roles in pop culture, a role that usually inspires vague terms such as “icon’’ because it can’t be categorized so narrowly like “comic’’ or “actress’’ or “singer.’’ At the end of the day, Fawcett, who died Thursday at 62 after a long bout with cancer, was a Hollywood celebrity heroine - brave yet broken, strong yet victimized, worldly yet innocent. She was the star of her own life.

Fawcett was one in a long line of Hollywood women - the spectrum ranges from Marilyn Monroe to Anna Nicole Smith to Paris Hilton - whose vulnerability and ditziness touched a chord in us. Her life became her most watched story, filled with fall-offs and comebacks, breakups and reunions. She brought the public along with her, as she dealt with her son Redmond O’Neal’s persistent drug-abuse issues, her on-off relationship with Ryan O’Neal, and her 3-year battle with anal cancer.

Fawcett was not simply a train wreck, but she had train-wreck moments that kept her fans watching - her disoriented 1997 “David Letterman’’ turn, her naked appearances in Playboy, her extreme cosmetic surgery, her assault at the hands of boyfriend James Orr, and the epic, tumultuous O’Neal romance. These tabloid dramas were a dominant, essential part of her celebrity.

Of course, Fawcett knew her celebrity was largely based on her personal story; her 2005 TV Land reality series “Chasing Farrah’’ was her very admission of her desire to keep her private life public. On the short-lived show, Fawcett primped for the cameras and enlisted O’Neal for an onscreen date to fuel tabloid curiosity about the true nature of their relationship. She complained about the paparazzi - thus the title “Chasing Farrah’’ - even while she played to them shamelessly. She made a number of references to her “Letterman’’ breakdown, in case we’d forgotten. Fawcett was less like Monroe, who was more purely a victim, and more like Smith, a nobody and a somebody at the same time, who obsessively courted tabloid attention and took Warholian fame-for-fame’s sake to an extreme.

That’s why it was so fitting that Fawcett brought us all along with her during her battle with cancer. She made sure that her final days were available to us, by having NBC air the documentary “Farrah’s Story’’ on May 15. It was the touching, disturbing denouement to a tale that began with a red bathing suit, a breezy hairdo, and one unforgettable poster.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog.