Lee Majors

A burgeoning heartthrob of 1960s television, Lee Majors would make it to the top of the world by the mid-1970s, earning a place in the pantheon of made-for-TV superheroes as "The Six Million Dollar Man" (ABC, 1974-78) and marrying arguably the most coveted woman in the world, Farrah Fawcett. Majors arrived in public consciousness as the eerily Elvis Presley-resembling youngest sibling on ABC's Western series "The Big Valley" (1965-69) and after a couple of other supporting roles, the network vaulted him to superstardom as the cyborg U.S. agent Steve Austin. The short but popular run of "The Six Million Dollar Man" would see him fight spies, aliens and even the legendary Bigfoot, on the way to becoming the frontispiece of a merchandising bonanza that would anticipate the "Star Wars" licensed-products phenomenon but a few years later. Though his ballyhooed marriage to Fawcett would end contentiously as both tried and failed to establish movie careers, Majors would bounce back on the lighthearted action series "The Fall Guy" (ABC, 1981-86), in which he portrayed a Hollywood stunt man who investigates crime on the side. Though his later career would see him appear on television and in films often cast comically against his all-American nice-guy type, he would remain forever the Bionic Man to a certain generation. Majors would, himself, play up his status as a bygone icon of 1970s culture gamely and amicably throughout the balance of his career.