The American actress Raquel Welch, known for her perfect plastic and her roles in “The Three Musketeers”, “The Animal” or even “One million years before J.-C.” is dead. She was 82 years old.
Her perfect physique had made her one of the sex symbols of the 60s, her talent as an actress had attracted filmmakers as talented as Claude Zidi, Richard Fleischer or Richard Lester… Raquel Welch died on Wednesday February 15. She was 82 years old.
Of Bolivian origin, Raquel Welch – whose real name is Jo Raquel Tejada – took dance and comedy lessons very early on, and won several beauty contests in her teens. In 1959 she married James Welch, whose name she kept after divorcing him in 1964. A model, she was noticed by manager Patrick Curtis (to whom she was married from 1967 to 1972) who made her debut in 1964 on the ABC channel in the series The Hollywood Palace, then the following year at the cinema in The Handyman with Elvis Presley. After two other small appearances, she obtains a more substantial role in A swingin’ summer, before being selected for the first female role of the science fiction film The Fantastic Journey. Beginner in the cinema but omnipresent in the magazines where the photos do not fail to reveal her perfect plastic, Raquel Welch becomes the sex symbol of a whole generation by appearing, dressed in animal skins, in the prehistoric film A million years before AD in 1967.
The producers will therefore seek to highlight his physique, as is the case in the feature films Fantasies by Stanley Donen and Myra Breckinridge by Michael Sarne. But its presence on the screen will still be more judiciously exploited in the universe of the western, as in The Hundred Rifles or A Colt for three bastards that it co-produces. In 1973, her humor in The Three Musketeers even earned her the Golden Globe for Best Comedy Actress. A role she resumed the following year in We called her Milady. In 1976 she toured under the direction of Peter Yates in the comedy Ambulances tout risque alongside Bill Cosby and Harvey Keitel. The following year, it was Frenchman Jean-Paul Belmondo that the beautiful American starred in Claude Zidi’s L’Animal. Christian Fechner, the producer of this adventure comedy, offered her a role in Patrice Leconte’s comedy Circulez, there’s nothing to see! in 1981, but for scheduling reasons Raquel Welch had to refuse, giving way to Jane Birkin.
In search of more dramatic roles, Raquel Welch turned, at the end of the 70s, to the small screen, devoting herself almost exclusively to it ever since. She thus appears in various television films and then in the television series Loïs et Clark, the new adventures of Superman, Central Park West, Spin City or even American Family. From 1980 to 1990 she was married to director André Weinfeld, who also produced the video “Raquel: Body & Mind”, in which the actress gave relaxation lessons. A second luxury role, she appeared in 1998 in Folle d’elle by Jérôme Cornuau alongside Ophélie Winter and Jean-Marc Barr, then in the comedies La Revanche d’une blonde and Tortilla soup (2001). His last screen appearance was in 2011 in the CSI: Miami series.