Actress Raquel Welch, who was considered one of Hollywood’s most iconic intercourse symbols and main actresses within the Nineteen Sixties, has handed away on the age of 82. Her household confirmed that she died this morning after a quick sickness. Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in San Diego, California. Her father was from Bolivia, and her cousin Lidia Gueiler Tejada was the Bolivia’s first feminine head of state.

Welch appeared in magnificence pageants as a teen and later turned fascinated by appearing. She moved to Los Angeles within the Nineteen Sixties to pursue her appearing desires and located administration who labored to show her right into a intercourse image. After showing in minor movie roles and TV visitor appearances, Welch’s main breakout function was within the hit movie Improbable Voyage, adopted by the prehistoric fantasy movie One Million Years B.C., which propelled her to stardom.

Although Welch is commonly remembered for her iconic deerskin bikini in One Million Years B.C., she was drawn to her function as Loana the cave woman, which she described as having “one thing very superhero about her.” Welch continued to star in profitable movies, together with the comedy Bedazzled and the westerns Bandolero! and 100 Rifles.

One in every of her different most well-known performances was within the 1973 movie The Three Musketeers, for which she gained the Golden Globe for Greatest Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Welch additionally labored as a singer and mannequin, and had a profitable enterprise enterprise within the Raquel Welch Wig Assortment. By means of later a long time, she continued to behave in movie and TV roles.

Welch is remembered as considered one of Hollywood’s all-time nice intercourse symbols, showing on Empire’s record of the “100 Sexiest Stars in Movie Historical past” and Playboy ranked her #3 on their “100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century” record. Her magnificence made her iconic, and Welch used her beautiful appears to be like to her benefit, however she generally felt restricted by her standing as a intercourse image.

Welch was accountable for her personal picture, nevertheless. For example, she refused to do nude scenes, in keeping with the New York Instances. “I’ve undoubtedly used my physique and intercourse attraction to benefit in my work, however at all times inside limits,” she mentioned. “I reserve some issues for my personal life, and they aren’t on the market.”

Whereas critics’ evaluations of Welch’s performances had been typically unkind, she is now higher revered for her comedic skills. She can be credited with altering the notion of what a Hollywood intercourse image may very well be, transferring away from the earlier “blonde bombshell” picture.

Whereas Welch’s beautiful appears to be like and roles as a intercourse image introduced her fame, she was happy with her Latina heritage. She later took her first husband’s final title to keep away from being typecast in Hollywood, however she remained happy with her roots. “I feel language is essential to your identification, and never having that…I generally really feel remoted from that a part of me,” Welch mentioned in 2015. “But I nonetheless really feel very, very Hispanic. The essence of who I’m is a Latina.”

Welch is remembered as a real magnificence and a real expertise, and her legacy will reside on on the earth of movie and past.