Cancer-stricken Hollywood actress Farrah Fawcett is to marry long-time lover Ryan O’Neal.

In an interview with ABC television’s Barbara Walters due to air later this week, 68-year-old O’Neal said that Charlie’s Angels star Fawcett, who has been battling anal cancer for three years, had agreed to marry him.

“I’ve asked her to marry me, again, and she’s agreed,” an emotional O’Neal told Walters in excerpts of the interview on the ABC News website.

O’Neal, who has been constantly by Fawcett’s side since news of her illness broke in September 2006, said Fawcett is “fighting for her life”.

In May the Ryan told People magazine that Fawcett’s cancer had spread to her liver and that her treatment had effectively ended.

Last month some of the biggest names in Hollywood attended the world premier of Farrah’s Story, a video diary documentary chronicling the aging stars battle with cancer.

O’Neal and Fawcett, 62, have been romantically involved off-and-on since 1982. The couple have a son together but have never married.

“I used to ask her to marry me all the time. But it just got to be a joke, you know. We just joked about it.”

O’Neal described his relationship with Fawcett as, “a love story. I just don’t know how to play this one. I won’t know this world without her,” he said, going on to add, “cancer is an insidious enemy.”