Raquel Welch, a famous American actress who rose to fame in the 1960s and ’70s after emerging from the water in a revealing, hairy bikini for the movie One Million Years BC, has passed away. She was 82.
According to her agent Stephen LaManna of the talent firm Innovative Artists, Welch passed away early on Wednesday morning following a brief illness.
Despite only having three lines in the silly prehistoric film One Million Years BC from 1966, Welch had a breakout performance. She managed to avoid pterodactyls while wearing a brown doeskin bikini, but not the attention of the general public.
She told The Associated Press in 1981, “I just assumed it was a silly dinosaur epic we’d be able to sweep under the carpet one day.” “Wrong. It turned out that I was the season’s Bo Derek—the woman in a loincloth about whom everyone exclaimed, “My God, what a bod!”—and whom they had anticipated would vanish overnight.
Elle didn’t. Instead, she took on the role of Lust for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their movie Bedazzled the very next year. She also played a secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom.
Playboy named her the “most sought woman” of the 1970s because of her beauty and curves, despite the fact that she was never entirely naked in the magazine. She was ranked No. 2 on Men’s Health’s “Hottest Women of All Time” list in 2013. The Shawshank Redemption features a poster of Welch covering an escape tunnel as the final of three images utilized by Tim Robbins’ character Andy Dufresne, along with Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe posters.
TV host Rosie O’Donnell and actor Chris Meloni were among the admirers who posted condolences on Twitter for the celebrity. On the TV show Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Welch collaborated with writer-director Paul Feig, who praised her as “kind, humorous, and a true superstar” with whom he was “very much in love for much of my life.” “We’ve lost a true icon,” he continued.
Welch was a dancer and vocalist in addition to being an actor. She replaced a vacationing Lauren Bacall in the Broadway production of Woman of the Year in 1981, surprising a lot of reviewers and garnering favorable reviews. In 1997, she made a comeback to Broadway with the musical Victor/Victoria.
She was aware that due to her gorgeous appearance, some people did not take her seriously. She told the Associated Press in 1993, “I’m neither Penny Marshall or Barbra Streisand. ‘Raquel Welch wants to direct?’ they’ll say. I need a break.
Welch was reared in La Jolla, California, after being born Jo-Raquel Tejada in Chicago, Illinois. (Her mother, Josephine, gave her the “Jo” in her name.) When Welch first met actor-turned-press agent Patrick Curtis, she was a divorced mother.
The irony of it all is that, despite what many believed, I was a single mother of two young children who was mistaken for a sex symbol. Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, her autobiography, was written by her.
She married Curtis again and he became her manager. With countless magazine covers, a long list of films, exercise DVDs, and books like The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program, he contributed to her transformation into a glamour girl.
She would star in exploitative movies, but she also astonished many in the business with excellent performances, such as The Three Musketeers by Richard Lester, for which she won a Golden Globe. She received praise for her performance opposite James Coco in the Merchant Ivory comedy-drama The Wild Party.
1988 saw the TV movie Right to Die receive another Golden Globe nomination. In a later episode of the show Seinfeld, she portrayed herself and made fun of diva characters, particularly hitting Elaine and rattling her companion Kramer.
She was married and divorced four times, leaving two children, Damon Welch and Tahnee Welch, who both went on to become actresses and landed a prominent part in the 1985 science fiction movie Cocoon.
