The American actor has died at the age of 82. In 1966, her appearances in Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years BC, wearing a fur bikini, shot her to stardom. Here we look back at her life and career.
Raquel Welch married her childhood sweetheart James Welch in 1959; they divorced in 1964, but she kept his surname. She began to appear on television and took bit parts in movies. Here she is, second from right, in the Elvis Presley vehicle Roustabout, 1964.
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Welch’s first leading role was in the cult sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage in 1966,playing Cora Peterson, part of a medical team who are shrunk to microscopic size and sent into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. The part turned her into a star.
Despite having only three lines in the Hammer fantasy film One Million Years BC made in 1966, Welch made an impact. This shot of her wearing a doe-skin and fur bikini was taken by an unnamed unit still photographer, turned into a poster and became a globally iconic pin-up.
Photograph: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
Welch, wearing a crocheted mini dress is besieged by photographers as she enters a room in Paris for her wedding ceremony to her manager Patrick Curtis in 1967. The ceremony was delayed for 15 minutes while police and city officials tussled with the photographers who had been ordered out of the room.
Welch as Sarita and Jim Brown as Lyedecker in 100 Rifles, 1969. The director tried to persuade Welch to go nude in her famous shower scene, but, as she did throughout her career, she refused.
