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Q: Did they ever show Charlie's face on the original "Charlie's Angels"?

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

Not once in the show's entire five-season run.

Even in the handful of episodes in which the character of Charlie Townsend appeared on screen, his face was somehow or other hidden, and each time it was a body double. John Forsythe, whose voice was -- during the show's run at least -- more famous than his face, never even came to the set.

Forsythe, an established actor well before the show premiered in 1976, was never credited in the role, with creator Aaron Spelling telling him he wanted to maintain the mystery of the Charlie character.

"Well, it proved as big a secret as Pearl Harbor," he told the Associated Press in a 1977 interview.

To this day, it remains one of the best known roles in his long, successful career. Enough so that when the show was remade as two big-screen films in the '00s, Forsythe was called in to, well, call it in again.

 

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