Raquel Welch Dead: Actress Dies At 82 After ‘Brief Illness’

Raquel Welch has died astatine the property of 82. The iconic 1960s enactment symbol passed aft a conflict with a brief, chartless illness, according to TMZ. Her household confirmed the quality to the tract connected Feb. 15, stating that she had passed distant that morning.

Raquel Welch is seen successful Los Angeles, California successful April 2017(Shutterstock)

Born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago connected September 5, 1940, the archetypal kid of a Bolivian aeronautical technologist and his wife, she was a performer and entertainer from an aboriginal age, per her authoritative Wikipedia page. The household moved to Southern California erstwhile she was two, and astatine property seven, the quality began grooming successful classical ballet — a pursuit she abandoned a decennary aboriginal erstwhile she was told she didn’t person the close physique for a nonrecreational ballerina.

By her mid-teens, she was already carving retired a abstraction for herself arsenic an icon of American beauty. After winning titles for Miss Contour and Miss Photogenic, she went connected to drawback the titles of Miss La Jolla and Miss San Diego. She studied theatre arts astatine San Diego State College, wherever she’d won a scholarship, past joined James Welch connected May 8, 1959. Raquel would spell connected to person 2 children with him, Damon Welch and Latanne Welch, but the matrimony to James ended with a separation successful 1962 and a divorcement 2 years later.

The brunette bombshell aboriginal joined Patrick Curtis from 1967 to 1972; André Weinfeld from 1980 to 1990, and Richard Palmer from 1999 till their separation successful 2003. Along the way, she became a section TV upwind newsman successful San Diego, past an planetary superstar, posing for Playboy successful 1979 without ever going afloat nude, appearing successful a legendary fuzzy bikini successful One Million Years B.C. successful 1966, and becoming an unforgettable pinup girl. 

Raquel Welch successful ‘One Million Years B.C.’ (Shutterstock)

Her database of tv credits includes Bewitched, Seinfeld, and McHale’s Navy, and her movie credits see roles successful 100 Rifles, The Three Musketeers (for which the famed beauty won a Golden Globe Award), and The Last of Sheila. Through it all, Raquel said she ne'er meant to go a enactment symbol. “I was not brought up to beryllium a enactment symbol, nor is it successful my nature to beryllium one,” she once said, per Wikipedia. “The information that I became 1 is astir apt the loveliest, astir glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding”

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