Known for her roles in One million years BC. et Myra Breckinridgeshe had toured with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Frank Sinatra and Burt Reynolds.
American actress Raquel Welch, star of the 1960s and 1970s who is widely remembered in Hollywood for her role as a cave naiad in an animal skin bikini in One million years before Jesus Christ, died Wednesday February 15 at the age of 82, announced his manager. Raquel Welch”passed away peacefully early this morning after a brief illness“, he explained in a press release sent to AFP, without further details.
During her career, she had appeared in more than thirty films, including The Fantastic Journey et The three Musketeers. His performance in this 1973 film earned him a Golden Globe. The actress has also starred in more than fifty television series.
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Born Jo Raquel Tejada, this American of Bolivian origin first made a name for herself as a beauty queen by winning several modeling competitions, before conquering Hollywood. After the disappearance of Marilyn Monroe, the young amazon with the auburn mane resumed the status of universal sex symbol, sweeping away the idea that only a blonde could embody the quintessence of femininity. To his great despair, his fame was mainly based on his plastic. “I really had the feeling that people were totally laughing at me, they were only interested in the other woman: the one astride, in a rabbit skin bikini, with that impossible hourglass figure!“, she says in her autobiography published in 2010.
Confined to her beauty status
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 Fleischer. The science fiction film makes her take off.
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That same year, she embodied a prehistoric savage in One million years before Jesus Christ, a poor quasi-silent film whose only poster will mark the history of cinema. She poses there in the famous animal skin bikini whose shreds seem to have been torn off by a ferocious animal or a hungry caveman. She will then chain the films in the 70s but will remain confined to her status of beauty. A yoga enthusiast, she got into the wellness business in the 1980s.
After having hidden her Latin origins for a long time, the actress ended up coming to terms with her roots later in her career, playing roles as Hispanics in American Family (2002) or Tortilla soup (2001). In 2008, then aged 68, she divorced her fourth husband, 14 years her junior. The end of his career saw him occasionally appear on screen, but he mostly focused on his brand of wigs. She leaves behind two children, Damon and Tahnee Welch.
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