Raquel Welch

Jo Raquel Welch (September 5, 1940 – February 15, 2023) was an American actress.

Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois.

She was the first child of Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo and Josephine Sarah Hall.

Her father, Armando Tejada, was an aeronautical engineer from La Paz, Bolivia, son of Agustin Tejada and Raquel Urquizo.

Welch graduated with honors from high school in 1958.

Seeking an acting career, she entered San Diego State College on a theater arts scholarship, and the following year she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch.

She assumed his last name and kept it throughout her life.

She won several parts in local theater productions.

In 1959, she played the title role in The Ramona Pageant, a yearly outdoor play at Hemet, California, which is based on the novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson.

Through her portrayal of strong female characters, helping her break the mold of the traditional sex symbol, Welch developed a unique film persona that made her an icon of the 1960s and 1970s.

Her rise to stardom in the mid-1960s was partly credited with ending Hollywood's vigorous promotion of the blonde bombshell.

Her love scene with Jim Brown in 100 Rifles also made cinematic history with their portrayal of interracial intimacy.

In 1960, Welch got a job as a weather presenter at KFMB, a local San Diego television station.

Because her family life and television duties were so demanding, she decided to give up her drama classes.

After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she made a "precarious living" as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress.

Welch was raised in the Presbyterian religion and continued to go to church every Sunday.

Welch initially intended to move to New York City from Dallas, but moved back to Los Angeles in 1963 and started applying for roles with film studios.

Welch first garnered attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966), after which she signed a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox.

They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C. (1966).

Although Welch had only three lines of dialogue in the film, images of her in the doe-skin bikini became bestselling posters that turned her into an international sex symbol.

She later starred in Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969), Myra Breckinridge (1970), Hannie Caulder (1971), Kansas City Bomber (1972), The Last of Sheila (1973), The Three Musketeers (1973), The Wild Party (1975), and Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976).

She made several television variety specials.

She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1974 for her performance as Constance Bonacieux in The Three Musketeers and reprised the role in its sequel the following year.

She was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Television Film for her performance in Right to Die (1987).

In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History".

Playboy ranked Welch No.3 on their "100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century" list.

In 2010, during the release of her memoir Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, Welch was interviewed on the talk show Tavis Smiley, and said, "My father came from a country called Bolivia. He was of Spanish descent."

Her cousin, Bolivian politician Lidia Gueiler Tejada, became the first female president of Bolivia and the second female non-royal head of state in the Americas.

Welch was named after her paternal grandmother.

Her mother, Josephine Hall, was the daughter of architect Emery Stanford Hall and his wife Clara Louise Adams; she was of colonial English ancestry.

Welch had a younger brother, James "Jim" Tejada, and a younger sister, Gayle Tejada.

The family moved from Illinois to San Diego, California, when Welch was two years old.

Welch attended the Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church every Sunday with her mother.

As a young girl, Welch had the desire to be a performer and entertainer.

She began studying ballet at age seven, but after ten years of study, she left the art at seventeen when her instructor told her she did not have the right body type for professional ballet companies.

At age 14, she won beauty titles as Miss Photogenic and Miss Contour.

While attending La Jolla High School she won the title of Miss La Jolla and the title of Miss San Diego – the Fairest of the Fair – at the San Diego County Fair.

This long line of beauty contests eventually led to the state title of Maid of California.

Her parents divorced when she finished her school years.

Her final film was How to Be a Latin Lover (2017).