Raquel Welch passed away at the age of 82 after a short illness. The American actress of Bolivian roots was remembered as one of the greatest sex symbols of the 20th century, but she was much more than a beautiful face and a body of perfect proportions.
Raquel Welch or real name Jo Raquel Tejada was born on September 5, 1940, in Chicago in the American state of Illinois as the oldest of three children in a family where father Armando Teyada worked as an aeronautical engineer and mother Josephine Hall was a housewife.
Zarana fell in love with ballet and trained in it for almost a decade. When she entered puberty and began to develop feminine curves, her dance teacher admitted that she did not have the figure of a ballerina and that no one would hire her in his dance troupe.
She decided to replace ballet slippers with pompoms and became a cheerleader. She was named Miss School in a local beauty pageant at her high school in La Jolla, San Diego, and soon won several similar titles at the city level.
She graduated from high school with honors and then enrolled in acting at San Diego State University. She took her first acting steps on the boards that mean life in a local theater troupe. However, it will be years before she is discovered by famous Hollywood studios.
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Main reason? She married her high school boyfriend James Welch when she was only 19 years old and soon became the mother of two children – she gave birth to a son, Damon, in 1959, and a daughter, Tahnee, two years later. She earned her living as a waitress in a cocktail bar, and as a model for the Neiman Marcus brand, and in her early twenties she was also a weather forecast presenter on the KFMB television station.
A million years before Christ
When she separated from her husband in 1964, she began actively working on her acting career. She met Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis, who convinced her to keep her ex-husband’s last name to avoid being typecast as a Latin American actress.
Latin American actresses in the 1960s had a harder time getting roles. The studios also wanted to replace her “exotic” name Raquel with something more common like Debbie, but she vehemently opposed it. She didn’t want to lose her identity completely in order to succeed in Hollywood.
At first, she played a few minor roles in smaller films and television series but gained greater public attention in the film “A Swingin’ Summer” from 1965. because of this, she got a contract with the well-known production company 20th Century Fox. With them, she shot the sci-fi film ” Fantastic Voyage”, which was a big hit and turned her into a star on the American market.
She became an international star thanks to her performance in the film “A Million Years Before Christ” directed by Don Chaffey in 1966. Although she had only three lines in the film, her feminine appearance in a fur bikini by British costume designer Carl Toms made her a dream girl for many men around the world.
The photo of Raquel Welch in that bikini was printed on a poster that was sold in incredible circulation and turned her into one of the biggest sex symbols of that time.
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Sex symbol
I’m not a fool, she later admitted to Time magazine. I realized I wasn’t the Maryl Streep they dressed up in a bikini. I was someone who came into the limelight overnight and became a superstar. I knew this was an opportunity I had to take.
Raquel Welch tried to act in projects of different genres – from the western “Bandalero!” until the controversial comedy “Myra Breckinridge” from 1970, in which she portrays a transgender person, but directors mostly sought her for the roles of a beautiful woman for whom men sigh.
Playboy named her the most desirable woman of the 1970s and the third sexiest star of the 20th century. Although she posed for that famous magazine, never she did not agree to completely nude photos.
Being a sex symbol was a huge responsibility and a constant struggle, the actress admitted in later interviews. It bothered me at first, but not anymore. I know you can be a sex symbol, but also that I can respect you. You can have both.
Thanks to her status as a sex symbol, she got the opportunity to participate in many things that she would not otherwise have access to. She acted on Broadway, but also got a role in the comedy “The Three Musketeers” in 1974, for which she received the Golden Globe Award.
The fight for women’s rights
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Raquel Welch didn’t want bikini scenes to be the only thing she would be remembered for. She wanted to use her popularity to help other younger actresses. When she was fired from the film adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row in 1982 and replaced by Debra Winger, she didn’t want to keep quiet. She decided to fight instead.
The MGM studio fired her, claiming that Raquel insisted on doing her makeup and hair at home, not on the film set, which made it difficult for the entire production. The American actress of Bolivian roots sued the studio and openly admitted that she was fired because her employers did not want to pay her the agreed 250,000 US dollars for the role. Debra Winger reportedly agreed to star in the same film for a smaller fee.
When it was ruled in her favor four years later and she won compensation in the amount of 10.8 million dollars, she said:
I think this shows that it is important to stand up for your rights and I hope that women in Hollywood and beyond will stand up for their rights when they feel they have been wronged.
She was married four times
After the age of forty, it is harder for women to get roles in Hollywood. It was also true in the case of Raquel Welch. Although she continued to act – mostly in television series, she also turned to other sources of income.
She has been a beauty ambassador for numerous cosmetic brands such as Mac and HairUWear wigs, recorded a series of exercise videos called “The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program”, and wrote her own memoir “Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage” ).
She was married four times. After divorcing her high school sweetheart, she was married to her manager Patrick Curtis from 1967 to 1972. It was fateful that she told the French director and producer Andre Weinfeld, with whom she was married from 1980 to 1990, and actor Richie Palmer, with whom she was married from 1999 to 2008.
Even though she didn’t find that one special person to spend her whole life with, that didn’t stop her from enjoying life.
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I like what I do, I actually enjoy being me and I make a very good living out of it. I am happy. I don’t need to have a man by my side to be happy.
