Legendary Hollywood star Raquel Welch has died

Welch rose to fame in the 1960s thanks to his role in “A Million Years BC.”the prehistoric adventure whose poster presented her to the world in a tiny bikini that made her one of the biggest sex symbols of her time. Golden Globe winner, the star acted in more than 30 films and 50 television series during a career spanning five decades, including “Fantastic Voyage” and “Three Musketeers.”

Jo-Raquel Tejada, born in Chicago on September 5, 1940, daughter of a Bolivian aeronautical engineer and from an Americangrew up in california where she studied classical dance. At the age of 14 she was crowned “Miss Photogenic” in a contest, the first of a long series of beauty awards that included “Miss California”.

After a brief marriage to James Welchwhom he met in high school and with whom She had two children before the age of 20, moved to Dallas where she worked as a waitress and posed as a model for posters. In 1963 she returned to Los Angeles, where he met advertising agent Patrick Curtiswhon convinced her to keep the last name Welch for hide their Latin origins.

He started his career with a few supporting roles. on the big screen, including “Roustabaout“, starring the king Elvis Presley. And she made the leap by being selected by the 20th Century Fox in 1966 to star in “Fantastic Voyage”directed by richard fleischer. would come next the role that immortalized her in the leather bikini that would mark his career.

“People saw me as a sex symbol. But I was actually a single mother with two small children!” she exclaimed half a century later. In her autobiography “Beyond the cleavage”: “Can you imagine me in the poster with a child in my arms and the other in his stroller? Busts the myth a bit, right?”