Actress Raquel Welch Tony Kent (Getty)
Raquel Welch, one of Hollywood’s most international beauty icons, died Wednesday at the age of 82, her agent confirmed to AFP. The actress, known during her career by the nickname The Body, rose to fame in the mid-1960s thanks to tapes that made her a worldwide sex symbol. Welch, who was of Bolivian descent, died after a short illness, his relatives told TMZ, the first to break the news.
Despite having more than 30 films and fifty television shows in her filmography, Welch is best known for her first film, One Million Years BC, which was released in 1966. The actress starred in this British production as a caveman wearing a small beige bikini. His performance in this fantasy tape, directed by Don Chaffey, became an iconic image for decades, drawing sighs from viewers around the world.
This tape brought her to fame. “Looking back, I just think, wasn’t I just a very lucky girl who encountered crazy circumstances?” she admitted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times a few years ago, reviewing her career. Before becoming a poster for one of Hollywood’s most well-known actresses, the actress had appeared in a few television programs since 1964 with supporting roles and hardly any dialogue.
Raquel Welch rose to fame in 1966 thanks to her performance in “One Million Years BC” (Sunset Boulevard) (Corbis via Getty Images).
That year, 1966, Welch appeared in another film that helped cement her tenure in Hollywood. This is Fantastic Voyage directed by Richard Fleischer, the director who made his name bringing to screen epic adventures such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and, years later, Soylent Green. In the volume, a scientist manages to reduce a submarine with a crew on board, who are injected into his bloodstream to save his life. Tape sequences have been used as an introduction to human anatomy in schools for decades. Welch played the scientist’s assistant.
Raquel Tejeda, which is Welch’s real name, was born in Chicago in 1940. Her mother was American and her father was originally from Bolivia. The actress has always been proud of her Latino heritage. In 2002, on his first trip to the South American country of his roots, he received a career award and visited some relatives. “The intention to come has always been in my heart and now that I’ve come, I’m happy,” Welch said in the city of Santa Cruz. Although the woman had played several Latina roles on television and in films, she only spoke a handful of phrases in her father’s language.
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