Raquel Welch Passes Away At The Age of 82

The star passed away peacefully on Wednesday morning after a brief illness, her manager said.Welch became an international sex symbol in the 1960s, widely remembered for playing a bikini-clad cavewoman in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C.She also won a Golden Globe for her role in 1974’s The Three Musketeers.Born Jo-Raquel Tejada in 1940, Welch grew up in California, where she won teen beauty pageants and later became a local weather forecaster.

Welch first earned fame in 1966 in the film Fantastic Voyage. It was her role in that sci-fi film that landed her a lucrative contract with 20th Century Fox, ultimately leading to her role in One Million Years B.C., which was released the same year. Welch, who said in 2017 she almost died shooting the British fantasy film, had just three lines in the entire movie. But it was her image as Loana in a “prehistoric” doeskin bikini for the film’s poster that catapulted her into the limelight.

Welch, who got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994, also stared in Legally Blonde with Reese Witherspoon and appeared in Spin City, CSI: Miami, House of Versace and, most recently, How to Be a Latin Lover.