Raquel Welch, actress and '60s sex symbol, dies at 82
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Raquel Welch, an actress who rose to fame as a sex symbol during the 1960s, died Wednesday after a brief illness, EW can confirm. She was 82.
Born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago in 1940, Welch entered the zeitgeist with her roles as Cora in the 1966 sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage and Loana in the fantasy film One Million Years B.C. Though she only had a handful of lines in the latter title opposite John Richardson, her memorable outfit — a risqué deerskin bikini — turned her into an international sex symbol.
Welch's star status magnified, and she continued to appear in a steady number of films throughout the '60s and '70s, including The Queens, Bedazzled, The Biggest Bundle of Them All, Lady in Cement, Hannie Caulder, 100 Rifles, The Three Musketeers, and Crossed Swords. She won a Golden Globe for her work in The Three Musketeers in 1975.
Herbert Dorfman/Corbis via Getty Images Raquel Welch
During that time, Welch also made appearances on The Cher Show (performing "I'm a Woman" alongside Cher) and as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station, on the station's "Sun Up" program.
Throughout the '80s and '90s, Welch forayed into TV and appeared on Mork & Mindy, Evening Shade, Seinfeld, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, C.P.W., and Spin City. Most recently, Welch appeared in a variety of movies and TV movies, including Legally Blonde, American Family, Tortilla Soup, The Ultimate Legacy, and How to be a Latin Lover.
"By age 7 I knew I wanted to be an actress," Welch told PEOPLE back in 2010 in celebration of her 70th birthday. "My parents enrolled me in a theater program. You could get away from some of the painfulness of real life. I always had flights of fancy. I've had a great life."
Welch is survived by her two children.
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