Golden Globe-winning actress Raquel Welch dies aged 82

Actress Raquel Welch, a Hollywood star also praised for her beauty, died this Wednesday morning (15) at a time when the film industry labeled actresses as “sex symbols”. Citing family members of the actress, the website TMZ claims that she was ill for a brief period, but her cause of death was not revealed.

Raquel Welch rose to fame in 1966 with the lead role in the movie “Fantastic Voyage”, becoming a coveted Hollywood name for the next two decades.

A star in a time before the #MeToo movement, in which Hollywood still named women as “sex symbols” or “bombshell”, Welch was labeled as a sex symbol when she appeared in a bikini in the feature in “A thousand centuries before Christ”, in 1966.

She then joined Empire magazine’s list of the 100 sexiest stars in film history in 1995, and was number 3 on a similar list made by Playboy, behind Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Neither the lists nor Playboy exist anymore.

For the roles of strong, determined and beautiful heroines, Welch is credited with causing Hollywood to reduce its investment, at least for a while, in blonde actresses.

She posed for Playboy in 1979, but refused to appear fully nude in the magazine’s pages, a requirement she also made in film contracts. Therefore, Hugh Hefner, owner of the magazine, said at the time that “Raquel Welch was one of the last classic sex symbols and came from an era when a woman could be chosen the sexiest in the world without taking off her clothes.”

Latin origin

Born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago in 1940, the actress is the daughter of an American mother and a Bolivian father. Her cousin, Lidia Gueiler Tejada, was Bolivia’s first female president, ruling as interim in 1979 and 1980.

Dreaming of being an artist, Raquel Welch began studying ballet at age 7, but dropped out at 17 after a teacher told her she didn’t have the physique to dance professionally. As a teenager, she won beauty contests, but she only started working as a model years later.

After graduating from high school, he began studying acting in San Diego and landed a job on the local TV channel presenting the weather forecast. Married to James Welch, her high school sweetheart, from whom she inherited her last name, she dropped out of theater to combine work on TV with caring for the couple’s two children.

Separated from her first husband, she moved to Dallas with the children and supported her family by working as a waitress and model at the Neiman Marcus department store.

Golden Globe

After debuting in Hollywood, Welch alternated roles in American cinema, such as “The Stone Woman”, alongside Frank Sinatra, and the western “The Price of a Coward”, with James Stewart and Dean Martin, both from 1968, with films in Europe, among them “A dream, a reality” (1966), in which he acts with Marcello Mastroianni, and “The Animal” (1977), with Jean Paul Belmondo.

In 1974, she received a Golden Globe in the category Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her role in the film “The Three Musketeers”. She was even nominated for her role in the 1987 TV series “Right to Die”.

Welch has worked in film, theater and TV. She received good reviews for her Broadway version of “Woman of the Year” (1981), in a role previously played by Lauren Bacall. In 1997, she staged “Vitor ou Vitoria”, following Julie Andrews and Liza Minelli.

Made appearances in the series “Seinfeld” and in the film “Legally Blonde”, with Reese Witherspoon. His last film was “How to become a conqueror” in 2017.

line of wigs

In the 1980s, like Jane Fonda, Raquel Welch knew how to profit from her good shape and beauty. She has released a book and video series featuring exercise programs, health, wellness and nutrition tips. She had a jewelry line and a cosmetics line, but her most successful venture was the HAIRuWEAR wig line.

After her first marriage, Raquel Welch had three other relationships. She married producer Patrick Curtis between 1967 and 1972; she spent ten years with producer Andre Weinfled, between 1980 and 1990, and with restaurateur Richard Palmer between 1999 and 2003. At the end of her fourth marriage, she said she would never marry again.

She is survived by her two children with James Welch, Tahnee and Damon Welch.