by ‘Sex symbol’ of the 1960s and 70s, Raquel Wells was 82
American actress Raquel Welch has died at the age of 82. The actress, who was successful in the movies mainly in the 1960s and 70s, passed away this Tuesday after a brief illness, according to the website TMZ. The death was confirmed by the family.
Raquel Welch is the stage name of Jo Raquel Tejada, who was born in Chicago on September 5, 1940, the daughter of a Bolivian father of Spanish descent and an Irish-American mother. The family moved to California when she was just two years old, she took dance lessons as a child and, as a teenager, entered beauty pageants. When she decided to become an actress, she began using her husband’s nickname to avoid being limited to “Latina” roles, which she kept even after the divorce.
After landing small roles in several productions, including “A House is Not a Home” and the musical “Roustabout,” she rose to fame in 1966 with her role in the science fiction film “Fantastic Voyage,” after which she signed a contract. with 20th Century Fox making “One Million Years BC” (“When the World Was Born”) – even though she only had three lines in the entire film, it was Raquel, emerging from the sea in a leather bikini, who it ended up becoming the most famous image of the film. And so he became the new sex symbol of Hollywood. In 2011, Time magazine listed the moment in the “Top 10 Pop Culture Bikinis”.
Still in 1966, he appeared with Marcello Mastroianni in the Italian film Dispara forte, directed by Eduardo De Filippo. in the same year she appeared in the movie “As Feiticeiras” as Elena in the segment “Fata Elena”. Still in Italy, she was the only American in the cast of The Oldest Profession in the World. He played Lust in Stanley Donen’s comedy “The Seven Wishes” (1967, better known under the original title “Bedazzled”) and opposite Frank Sinatra in “A Woman in Cement” (1968). He caused a stir with sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the western spaghetti “100 Guns in the Sun” (1969) and as the eponymous transgender role in “Myra Breckinridge” (1970) – adapted from the novel by Gore Vidal and starring the then 77-year-old Mae West.
Actor James Stewart with Raquel Welch in 1976 (Getty Images)
She received rave reviews in “Kansas City Bombe” (1972) and “The Nightfall” (1975), won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1974 for her performance in “The Three Musketeers” and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award Best Actress in a TV Movie for her performance in “Right to “Die” (1987). However, she was never taken very seriously in the film world. In the 1980s, most of her career was spent on television.
In 1995, Welch was selected by Empire magazine as one of the “100 Sexiest Stars in Movie History”. And Playboy ranked Welch third on its list of the “100 Sexiest Stars of the 20th Century.”
In 2001 he participated in the film “Legally Blonde”, with Reese Witherspoon.
