American actress Raquel Welch, star of the 1960s and 1970s who is widely remembered in Hollywood for her role as a cave naiad in an animal skin bikini in “A Million Years Before Jesus Christ”, died on Wednesday February 15, at the age of 82, announced his manager.
Mme Welch “passed away peacefully early this morning after a brief illness”, he explained in a press release sent to AFP, without further details. During her career, she had appeared in more than thirty films, including The Fantastic Journey And The three Musketeers.
His performance in this 1973 film earned him a Golden Globe. The actress has also starred in more than fifty television series.
Beauty and Hollywood queen
Born Jo Raquel Tejada, this American of Bolivian origin first made a name for herself as a beauty queen by winning several modeling competitions, before conquering Hollywood.
After the disappearance of Marilyn Monroe, she resumed the status of universal sex symbol. But to his great despair, his fame was mainly based on his plastic.
“I really had the feeling that people were totally laughing at me, they were only interested in the other woman: the one astride, in a rabbit skin bikini, with this impossible hourglass figure! »she confided in her autobiography published in 2010.
After twenty very secondary roles, she was spotted by 20th Century Fox, who chose her in 1966 as the headliner for The Fantastic Journey by Richard Fleischer. The science fiction film makes her take off.
That same year, she embodied a prehistoric savage in One million years BC, a poor almost silent film whose only poster will mark the history of cinema. She poses there in the famous animal skin bikini. Raquel Welch will then chain the films in the 1970s, but will remain confined to her status as a beauty.