MARITAL STATUS
Profession Actress
Birth name Jo Raquel Tejada
American nationality
Birth September 5, 1940 (Chicago, Illinois – United States)
Death February 15, 2023
BIOGRAPHY
Of Bolivian origin, Raquel Welch – real name Jo Raquel Tejada – took dance and acting lessons very early on, and won several beauty contests in her adolescence. In 1959 she married James Welch, whose name she kept after divorcing him in 1964. A model, she was noticed by manager Patrick Curtis (to whom she was married from 1967 to 1972) who made her debut in 1964 on the ABC channel. in the series The Hollywood Palace, then the following year at the cinema in The Handyman with Elvis Presley . After two other small appearances, she obtained a larger role in A swingin’ summer , before being chosen for the leading female role in the science fiction film Fantastic Journey . A beginner in the cinema but omnipresent in magazines where the photos do not fail to reveal her perfect physique, Raquel Welch became the sex symbol of an entire generation by appearing, dressed in animal skins, in the prehistoric film A Million Years Before AD in 1967.
Producers will, from then on, seek to highlight his physique, as is the case in the feature films Fantasies by Stanley Donen and Myra Breckinridge by Michael Sarne . But her presence on screen will still be more judiciously exploited in the world of the western, as in The Hundred Rifles or A Colt for Three Bastards which she co-produced. In 1973, her humor in The Three Musketeers even earned her the Golden Globe for Best Comedy Actress. A role that she reprized the following year in On l’appelle Milady . In 1976 she starred under the direction of Peter Yates in the comedy All Risk Ambulances alongside Bill Cosby and Harvey Keitel . The following year , the beautiful American starred opposite Frenchman Jean-Paul Belmondo in L’Animal by Claude Zidi . Christian Fechner , the producer of this adventure comedy, offered him a role in 1981 in Patrice Leconte ‘s comedy , Circulate, there’s nothing to see! , but for scheduling reasons Raquel Welch had to refuse, giving way to Jane Birkin .
In search of more dramatic roles, Raquel Welch turned to the small screen at the end of the 1970s, devoting herself almost exclusively to it ever since. She thus appears in various TV films then in the television series Loïs et Clark, The New Adventures of Superman , Central Park West , Spin City and American Family . From 1980 to 1990 she was married to the director André Weinfeld , who also directed the video “Raquel: Body & Mind”, in which the actress gives relaxation classes. A second luxury role, she appeared in 1998 in Folle d’elle by Jérôme Cornuau alongside Ophélie Winter and Jean-Marc Barr , then in the comedies La Revanche d’une blonde and Tortilla soup (2001). His last appearance on screen dates from 2011 in the series CSI: Miami .
