Golden Globe winner and renowned actress Raquel Welch has passed away, according to PEOPLE. She was 82.
According to her manager Steve Sauer, Welch “died away painlessly early this morning after a brief illness.”
Sauer said, “Over the course of her more than 50-year career, she appeared in more than 30 films and 50 television shows. In more recent years, the Golden Globe winner was associated with a hugely popular wig brand. Damon Welch, Raquel’s son, and Tahnee Welch, her daughter, are her two children.”
The news was initially reported by TMZ.
With breakthrough performances in 1966’s Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C., Welch made her film debut in the middle of the 1960s.
The Three Musketeers, which she starred in in 1973, won her a Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture comedy or musical. She would go on to star in scores of other movies.
She has also appeared in films like Legally Blonde, The Prince and the Pauper, Chairman of the Board, and 100 Rifles. How to Be a Latin Lover from 2017 featured her in her last movie appearance. Additionally, she and Cher famously performed “I’m a Woman” together in 1975 on The Cher Show.
After showing off her curves in the kitsch classic One Million Years B.C. from 1966, Welch rose to fame as a pin-up. But beneath the glitz, the celebrity (real name Jo Raquel Tejada) was a devout single mother who used her success as a sex bomb to support herself and her two children after divorcing her first husband in 1964.
I never imagined life was going to offer me something for nothing, the actress, whose book Beyond the Cleavage became a bestseller, previously told PEOPLE as she celebrated her 70th birthday in 2010.
Welch said at the time that she knew she wanted to be an actor by the age of seven. She was born in Chicago to a Bolivian-born engineer and his American wife.
cheval cheval cheval cheval cheval chevalgültig cheval cheval cheval cheval cheval cheval cheval cheval cheval “I was enrolled in a theater program by my parents. You may get away from some of the painfulness of actual life. I’ve always had my fantasies.”
She said at the time, “I’ve had a terrific life — and it’s not over yet!” as she gave her mother Josephine credit for her tenacity.
