Raquel Welch, an actress who was considered one of the most attractive women to ever star in the film industry, passed away Wednesday. She was 82 years old.
TMZ reported that Welch died this morning after battling a short illness.
Welch was known for appearing in movies like “Fantastic Voyage,” “Hannie Caulder,” “Bedazzled,” and “The Three Musketeers,” for which she won a Golden Globe.
The author of a memoir entitled “Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage,” Welch was known for her beauty and was listed on Empire magazine’s “100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.”
According to Page Six, Welch’s performance in “One Million Years B.C.,” where she wore a fur bikini, made her famous. She later told Fox News that she got tonsillitis from the conditions while filming.
“I had already so much penicillin when I was wearing the fur bikini that I almost died,” Welch told Fox News. “I had to rush, turn my car around and head right back to the doctor’s office, just run upstairs, jump in the elevator, and all that.”
“And I barely got there. They had to shoot me with an antidote. Otherwise, I would have died,” she added. “It was [a] really rough shoot, man. Really rough. And then I came to London and everybody knew who I was.”
#TodaysMovieSpotlight – One Million Years, B.C. (1967): Remake of One Million B.C. is an improvement with Raquel Welch sporting the world's first fur bikini and Ray Harryhausen bringing dinosaurs to life with his amazing stop-motion animation. Hammer made 3 more prehistoric pics. pic.twitter.com/V6dYPFgFBy
— Classic Film TV Cafe (@classic_film) August 14, 2020
The actress earned a theater arts scholarship to San Diego State College where she cultivated her acting skills by performing in local plays. In 1959, she married her high school boyfriend, James Welch, before they divorced five years later. They had two children together, Damon and Latanne.
During a 2014 interview with then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Welch said she “was more on the conservative side” politically. “I think it was my upbringing, to tell you the truth, Midwestern values,” she said when asked how she came to be conservative. “I just was raised in a certain way, ladies behave a certain way, your country is important, honor those people who do fight for our country.”
In the same interview, Welch noted how she had traveled to Vietnam in the 1960s alongside comedian Bob Hope to entertain American soldiers stationed overseas.
Leif Le Mahieu contributed to this report.