"The most desirable woman of the 1970s" Raquel Welch: an actress who became famous thanks to a bikini

American actress and singer Raquel Welch first attracted attention by playing one of the main roles in the 1966 film "Fantastic Journey". But to our audience, like the rest of the world, Welch is most likely known for the film "A Million years BC" of the same year, where the actress utters only three phrases and appears in a deer skin bikini. 

It was after the release of this film that Raquel Welch gained fame and became a sex symbol of her time. And her photo in a bikini became the best-selling poster. 

Jo Raquel Tejada was born on September 5, 1940 in Chicago in the family of Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquiso, an aviation engineer, and an Englishwoman Josephine Sarah Hall. The actress has a younger brother, James, and a younger sister, Gail Carol.

The family moved to San Diego, California, when Raquel was two years old. Since childhood, the girl was distinguished by her artistry, she studied ballet until the age of 17, but dropped it because, according to the teacher, she had an unsuitable figure.

From the age of 14, she participated in beauty contests, mostly winning. Her parents divorced when Welch graduated from high school.

In 1958, the future actress graduated from high school and a year later married a school friend James Welch, whose last name she left after a divorce in 1964. The couple had two children-a son, Damon, and a daughter, Lathanne.

In total, Raquel Welch was married four times, but her last marriage with Richard Palmer ended in divorce in 2008. In an interview, the actress said that she does not intend to get married anymore.

Welch studied at the University of California in San Diego, but due to a divorce and being the mother of two children, she never graduated from it. She took part in several productions of the local theater.

She worked at the local TV station KFMB as a weather forecast presenter. After the divorce, she moved to Dallas, where she worked as a model at Neiman Marcus and as a waitress.

In 1963, she moved to Los Angeles and began to go to auditions. She met a Hollywood agent, Patrick Curtis, who was a child star, who became her manager. Together they came up with the image of a sex symbol and got rid of the real name of Tejada, so that she would not be perceived as a Latin American actress, and took the surname of her first husband Welch.

The first character role went to Welch in the 1965 film A Swingin " Summer. In the same year, she received an award as the best debutante and was noticed by the wife of producer Saul David, who advised her candidacy to 20th Century Fox.

Welch was chosen for the main role in the film" Fantastic Journey", which brought her fame. After that, the Fox studio allowed her to star in the film" A million years before our era", a remake of the 1940 film.

The actress appeared in front of the audience in a bikini, which enthusiastic critics called "the canonical image of the 1960s". The New York Times newspaper in a review of the film called the actress "a beautiful and living monument to the female family". "Although she uttered three phrases during the entire film, her curvy figure in a fur bikini made her a star and the dream of millions of young people." 

The promotional photo for the film became the best-selling poster, and Raquel Welch was called a sex symbol of her time.

Due to the beauty and popularity of the actress, Playboy called her "The Most desirable woman" of the 1970s.

In 1974, she received the Golden Globe as "Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy" for the film "The Three Musketeers", where she played Constanza. She was again nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in the 1987 drama The Right to Die.

In 1979, she posed for a Playboy photo shoot without completely exposing herself. Hugh Hefner was extremely unhappy with her condition not to undress, but later admitted that Raquel Welch "is the sexiest woman in the world and without having to take off all her clothes. She refused to undress, and I retreated. The resulting photos proved her right."

Throughout her career, Welch refused to completely undress on screen. She once said: "What I do on the screen, in no way can be equated with what I do in my personal life. Off-screen, I'm reserved and strict, I don't like hype."