The American actress Raquel Welch died at the age of 82
Eva Deschamps / February 17, 2023
She became famous for her roles in The Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C.
American actress Raquel Welch, a star of the 60s and 70s who is widely remembered in Hollywood for her role as a cave naiad in a beast skin bikini in A Million Years B.C., died Wednesday at the age of 82, her manager announced.
Ms. Welch "died peacefully early this morning after a brief illness," he explained in a statement sent to AFP, without further details. During her career, she had appeared in more than thirty films, including The Fantastic Voyage and The Three Musketeers.
Her performance in this film in 1973, had earned him a Golden Globe. The actress has also played in more than fifty television series.
Born Jo Raquel Tejada, this American of Bolivian origin first made a name for herself as a beauty queen by winning several modeling contests, before conquering Hollywood.
After the death of Marilyn Monroe, the young Amazon with the auburn mane took over the status of universal sex symbol, sweeping away the idea that only a blonde could embody the quintessence of femininity. To her great despair, her fame rested mostly on her plastic.
I really had the feeling that people didn't care about me at all, they were only interested in the other woman: the one in the breeches, in the bunny skin bikini, with that impossible wasp waist", she confides in her autobiography published in 2010.
After twenty roles as an extra, she was spotted by 20th Century Fox, which chose her in 1966 as the lead in Richard Fleischer's Fantastic Voyage. The science fiction film makes it take off.
That same year, she plays a prehistoric savage in "A million years before Christ", a poor film almost mute whose poster alone will mark the history of cinema. She poses in the famous bikini in animal skin whose shreds seem to have been torn by a ferocious animal or a hungry caveman.
She then made a series of films in the 70s but remained confined to her status as a beauty.
A yoga enthusiast, she launched herself into the wellness business in the 1980s.
After hiding her Latin origins for a long time, the actress finally assumed her roots later in her career, playing Hispanic roles in American Family (2002) or Tortilla soup (2001).
In 2008, at the age of 68, she divorced her fourth husband, 14 years her junior.
The end of her career saw her appear occasionally on screen, but she focused mainly on her wig brand.
She leaves behind two children, Damon and Tahnee Welch.