Raquel Welch, the film actress and leading sex symbol of the 1960s and 1970s, has died at age 82 after a brief illness, AFP reported on Wednesday, citing her manager.
Welch first came to the wide attention of moviegoers for her role in the 1966 sci-fi adventure Fantastic Voyage.
It was her iconic appearance later that year in the prehistoric drama One Million Years B.C. that sealed her status.
Although Welch had only a few lines of dialogue, images of her memorable appearance in a fur-skinned bikini made her a bestselling pin-up that transformed her into a global sex symbol.
Welch starred in more than 30 films including The Three Musketeers, as well as some 50 television series, in a career spanning five decades.
In her 2010 autobiography Beyond the Cleavage, Welch admitted she had struggled to avoid being typecast, writing that her acting career became ‘eclipsed by this bigger-than-life sex symbol’.
However, in a rare 2018 interview, Welch said she was at peace with being forever associated with her prehistoric bombshell heroine.
‘I’m often asked if I get sick of talking about that bikini, but the truth is, I don’t. It was a major event in my life so why not talk about it’?
She starred in Hollywood’s first interracial sex scene with Jim Brown in 100 Rifles, and as a transgender heroine in the explicit Myra Breckinridge (1970).
Welch later launched herself into the business of well-being, publishing her Total Beauty and Fitness programme in 1984. She also developed her own line of wigs, hairpieces and hair extensions.
She appeared opposite Reese Witherspoon in the hit 2001 romantic comedy Legally Blonde. ‘She was elegant, professional and glamorous beyond belief. Simply stunning.’
Welch married four times.
[Image: Justin Hoch, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16674303]