We often tend to believe that all the celebrities have been given all they have on a plate. The reality is quite different, and most of these people who live glamorous lives and have millions of fans from all over the world had to work really hard for what they have and who they are today.
Although she comes from a family of famous engineers and architects, Raquel Welch’s life wasn’t always smooth sailing. Born in 1940 as Jo Raquel Tejada, Welch tried herself as a ballerina during her young age, but her coach thought she just didn’t have the “right figure.” As a result, Welch decided to use her natural beauty and appeared in several beauty contests, winning most of them. At the age of 14, Welch was crowned Miss San Diego.
“I wasn’t good at dealing with reality… I wanted a storybook life, to be Rapunzel and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, all the beautiful ladies that wonderful men came along on their big white horses and dragged away. Which is not remarkable, a lot of kids grow up that way. But I decided it was gonna happen,” Welch said back in 1974.
When she turned 18, Welch married James Welch, but the two untied the knot in 1961 after which she moved to Texas with their two children.
Welch had a hard time coping with reality and taking care of her kids all by herself, but the thought of becoming an actress never left her.
How else would her wish of so many years come true if not in Hollywood. So, her next step was moving there and being as close as never to this incredible world of glamour. There, Welch met her second husband, press agent Patrick Curtis. This man was so in love with Welch that he managed to present her to the world as a celebrity without her even playing in a single movie at the time, all thanks to her curves and her sensual face. That, however, was a great start to the rich career that would await this icon.
She didn’t start huge but played some small roles in various movies, including Elvis Presley’s film Roustabout (1964).
Then, she stole the hearts of the lovers of film playing in Fantastic Voyage (1966) and One Million Years B.C. “I had made another movie which was a big step up for me (Fantastic Voyage),” she said during an interview with the Sunday Post in 2018. That “should have been released before One Million Years B.C., but the special effects delayed it, so I was the dinosaur lady first and the science lady second,” Welch said.
Playing a cave girl in One Million Years B.C, Welch only had a single line, but that didn’t stop her from showing her incredible talent and her breathtaking looks. “I had no other credentials as an actress outside of that one laughable line of dialogue: ‘Me Loana… You Tumak.’ It felt like I’d stumbled into a booby trap – pun intended. I’m a living proof that a picture speaks a thousand words,” Welch said.
Throughout the years, Welch took part in many films and she even got her own television program called Raquel! Her healthy lifestyle and her passion for yoga resulted in her publishing a book with exercises.
Men’s Health named her second hottest woman of all time in their 2014 issue.
Welch married four times, and although she claimed she had true feeling for all her husbands, none of the relationships lasted long.
At the age of almost 80, Welch still steals hearts from fans from all over the world and is still dubbed one of the most beautiful women ever.