By E. Graydon Carter

Farrah Fawcett as Orson Welles? Well, not quite in bulk, but maybe a wee bit in skills. Asked to perform in a TV commercial for Faberge hair products bearing her name, Farrah, 34, wrote the ad, okayed the cinematographer, had a hand in picking the props and even chose her costar, ex-New York Jet Joe Namath, 38. "I saw the ad in my mind and it came out exactly as I wanted it," says Farrah. "It has a sense of humor." The 30-sec. spot calls for Farrah to take a shower with Namath, with whom she teamed up in the early '70s for a Noxema ad. Joe has been the longtime spokesman for Faberge's line of men's cologne, Brut. "I wrote the commercial with Joe in mind," says Farrah. "There is sweetness and vulnerability in that macho shell."

A one-week vacation in Jamaica, a two-week sojourn in Hawaii, a 1982 Cadillac. Those were the principal gifts given to outgoing Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, 43, last week by his admirers at a teary farewell dinner in the Georgia capital. Jackson has served the two four-year terms that local law allows. Among the 1,300 friends who turned up for the $100-a-plate affair were Singer Gladys Knight, and former U.N. Ambassador and Atlanta Mayor-elect Andrew Young. "I don't know that anybody's going to fill your shoes," said Young as he surveyed Jackson's ample 6-ft. 3-in. frame. "And certainly not your suits."

He pulled up to Washington's National Press Club not in a sleigh, but in a dark blue Dodge. Dressed in his customary rumpled civics, Presidential Assistant Lyn Nofziger, 57, bore little resemblance to St. Nick. Fortunately the illusion improved slightly after Nofziger sausaged himself into the red-and-white threads of Santa Claus. He inherited the Santa job when he agreed to serve as honorary chairman of a benefit for Washington's Children's Hospital National Medical Center. "It was really tough sledding," said Nofziger.

"Now I know why Santa has such a good garden--he's always ho-ho-hoing." "What attracts me to this role is the chance to play both a young innocent and an intelligent girl who has made the choice of living intensely." So says Actress Nastassja Kinski, 20, a veteran of seven movies and a few romances (Directors Roman Polanski, Milos Forman), in Paris to film Exposed. In the picture Kinski plays a girl who trades in her protected life in the rural Midwest for a career as a fashion model. "She wants to be obsessed by something," says Kinski, who has been fretting a bit about her own career. "I thought film was ruining my life," she confesses. "But I am starting to enjoy it&151;to be a good actress, one has to live first."

The Kennedy Center Honors gala, just four years old, has emerged as one of the hottest tickets in the capital. The some 2,000 guests who attended this year's event witnessed the presentation of lifetime-achievement awards in the performing arts to an august quintet: Actor Cary Grant, 77, Actress Helen Hayes, 81, Jazzman Count Basie, 75, Choreographer Jerome Bobbins, 63, and Pianist Rudolf Serkin, 78. The gala will be broadcast by CBS on Dec. 26. Said a pleased Hayes, "Us old-timers were like kids who were graduating magna cum laude--we were really sailing above the earth."

--By E. Graydon Carter

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