Fairchild starred or co-starred in more than a dozen film roles before her addictions to drugs and alcohol effectively ended her professional acting career.

[1] Fairchild co-starred in Head, a vehicle for The Monkees, in 1968; in Drive, He Said, directed by Jack Nicholson; and Pretty Maids All in a Row, directed by Roger Vadim, in 1971; in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, which starred Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges, in 1974; and in the 1978 Cheech & Chong film, Up in Smoke, in which she appeared as a drug addict who snorts Ajax soap powder.

[7] Fairchild was selling newspapers outside a Los Angeles courthouse at the time in an attempt to earn enough money for a single-room occupancy hotel room.

[1] On February 21, 2001, the same day that her story was published in the Los Angeles Times, police stopped her in Van Nuys for carrying an open container.

A police officer recognized her picture from the newspaper and arrested her for failure to complete her community service from a past drunk driving conviction.