American actress Raquel Welch died on Wednesday at the age of 82, her manager announced.
Raquel Welch “passed away peacefully early this morning after a brief illness”, he explained in a press release, without further details. During her career, the actress had appeared in more than thirty films, including The Fantastic Journey et The three Musketeers.
Star of the 1960s-1970s, Hollywood remembers Raquel Welch for her role as a cave naiad in a bikini of animal skin in A million years before Christ.
A Golden Globe in 1973
Born in Chicago on September 5, 1940 to a Bolivian aeronautical engineer and an American, Raquel Welch grew up in California where she learned classical dance. After living off odd jobs as a waitress and model, her career was launched by Patrick Curtis, an enterprising advertising agent.
After twenty extra roles, she was spotted by 20th Century Fox who chose her in 1966 as the headliner for The fantastic journey by Richard Fleicher. The science fiction film makes her take off.
She went on to film in the 1970s but remained confined to her status as a beauty in all the genres in which she ventured. Westerns (Bandit, One colt for three bastards), Detective movies, detective films (The cement woman) or comedies (L’animal by Claude Zidi with Belmondo). However, she won a Golden Globe for The three Musketeers in 1973.