Raquel Welch, one of Hollywood’s most known sex symbols and movie stars of the 1960s, died at the age of 82.

With parts in films such as One Million Years B.C. and Fantastic Voyage, the actress, who is well-known for her striking appearance, embraced recognition as a sex symbol, reinventing the role and rising as one of Hollywood’s top lead actresses.

According to her relatives, who confirmed the news, she died this morning following a brief illness.

Welch was born on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, and reared in San Diego, California. Lidia Gueiler Tejada, Bolivia’s first female president, was also from the country and had a Bolivian father.

She was born Jo Raquel Tejada, but she later took her first husband’s surname to avoid Hollywood’s stereotyped representation of Latinas.

“I believe that language is really crucial to your identity, and not having it… “I sometimes feel disconnected from that aspect of me,” Welch admitted in 2015. “Yet, I still feel quite Latino. “A Latina is the essence of who I am.”

Welch competed in beauty pageants as a teenager and later acquired an interest in acting. She moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s to pursue her acting dreams, where she encountered managers who tried to turn her into a sex symbol.

She had a few minor film roles and TV cameos before starring in the smash Fantastic Voyage.

Her third film, the historical fiction One Million Years B.C., solidified her standing as an icon. Welch had only three lines in the film, but she became its most famous character thanks to the now-iconic deerskin bikini she wore. Despite this, Welch was proud of her Latino origins.

As the movie’s poster became a best-seller, Welch became one of the most well-known pin-up heroines of the age. It is still a well-known Hollywood film, and Emily Ratajowski has paid homage to it.

Despite the fact that she is most recognized for wearing a bikini, Welch claimed that she was drawn to her character as Loana the cave girl.

“I loved that she had a superhuman quality to her,” Welch told The Los Angeles Times in 2016. “At least I wasn’t one of those mincing young girls; that was never my intention.”

She went on to star in a number of successful films, including the comedy Bedazzled and the westerns Bandolero! and 100 Rifles. She starred in the contentious picture Myra Breckinridge, demonstrating her willingness to take risks in her career.

She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for another of her most well-known roles, in the 1973 film The Three Musketeers.

Welch was also a model and singer. Her Raquel Welch Wig Collection business has been a success for her. Throughout the decades that followed, she continued to appear in films and television shows.

She is widely recognized as one of Hollywood’s greatest sex idols of all time, ranking third on Playboy’s list of the “100 Hottest Stars of the Twentieth Century” and making Empire’s list of the “100 Sexiest Stars in Cinema History.”

While her beauty made her iconic, and Welch utilized her magnificent attributes to her advantage, she also felt confined by her role as a sex symbol, as the title of her biography, Beyond the Cleavage, suggests.

“There was this idea that she was basically a sexpot. She’s merely a shell. ‘She probably can’t walk and chew gum at the same time,’ she said.

Although Welch’s performances were routinely panned by critics, she is now better known for her comedic abilities. Furthermore, she is credited for changing the “blonde bombshell” notion of a Hollywood sex symbol.

Despite the fact that filmmakers frequently used her sexiness to advertise a film, Welch had control over her image. According to the New York Times, she refused to perform naked sequences.

“I’ve utilized my figure and sex appeal to my advantage in my career, but always within boundaries,” she remarked. “Somethings are reserved for my private life and are not for sale.”

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