Raquel Welch is a pop culture icon.
If her name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps the One Million Years B.C. film poster featuring
her clad in a fur bikini will.
That role shot her to superstardom in 1966, but what's happened to her since?
To start, she's almost 80 today and still gorgeous.
It's funny that One Million Years B.C. put Welch on the map as a silver screen star considering
that it doesn't really showcase her acting chops.
She even admitted in her autobiography, Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, that the fame that followed
was something that surprised her.
As she put it,
"It felt like I'd stumbled into a booby trap, pun intended.
I am living proof that a picture speaks a thousand words."
Although you might think Welch would resent the movie that turned her into eye candy,
she has no regrets.
While speaking to Piers Morgan years later on his Life Stories show, she revealed that
she liked the attention that blew up from the film, explaining,
"I thought that this was going to be one of those movies that was going to make me a laughing
stock, well it did that too, and it's a breakthrough.
Every single person seems to know who I am."
The flick was so iconic, in fact, that no matter how much time passes, Welch's impression
on Hollywood has remained eternal.
In 2013, she landed the number 2 spot on Men's Health's Hottest Women of All Time list, proving
that age is just a number and pop culture icons never fade.
"You do give the impression of being at least nine feet tall on the screen, I don't know,
maybe, partly that poster from, what is it?"
"Yeah, One Million Years B.C., to the ah, right."
It's no secret that Welch is known for her fantastic shape.
Although genetics definitely played a role, the actress has always made sure to keep up
a workout regimen.
In fact, a quick YouTube search will easily turn up some of her fitness videos from back
in her heyday, all featuring her donning hilariously colored unitards.
She eventually ditched the workout gear for something less visually abrasive, as she's
turned her focus to yoga, having practiced the stretching discipline every day for over
three decades.
As for her face, which miraculously still looks flawless to this day, Welch once admitted
that she utilizes a certain product for a bizarre trick.
During her Life Stories interview with Piers Morgan, she dished,
"Bag Balm is kind of a silly thing.
It's used when they milk cows on their udders.
It is something you can put on overnight and when you wake up you don't have a dry, cracking
mouth.
Believe me, there are a lot of mummies walking around with Bag Balm."
Welch has had four husbands and four divorces over the years.
If you're wondering how all those men have slipped away, you're not alone.
These days, the actress is remarkably single, and she likes it that way.
She told Piers Morgan on Life Stories,
"I'm too set in my ways.
I like what I do, I actually enjoy being me and I make a very good living at it and I'm
happy…[Men] like the whole attraction and the sort of dance that we all do, but they
don't really like the fact that when we go someplace together I become the person that's
focused on.
It just doesn't work well with the male/female relationship."
As it turns out, being a silver screen starlet comes with some woes, too, as some former
lovers have apparently tried using Welch for her fame.
As she explained on Life Stories,
"Sometimes it was because people were with me because of who I was and what I could bring
to the table.
While I'm away working they like to start controlling the finances and all kinds of
other things, and when I find out about that, I'm not happy."
With her time as a pop culture legend spanning decades, Welch was named a Mac Cosmetics icon
in 2007 when she was 67 years old.
Sitting pretty with other legends, such as Brooke Shields and even Marge Simpson, Welch
has earned her status among the elite.
With the packaging featuring a retro tiger striped theme and with the products dubbed
"Tiger Tiger lipstick" and "Amazon eye shadow," it's easy to tell that her movie roles continue
to inspire people today.
While Welch's good looks have certainly contributed to her success, she also has a man named Allan
"Whitey" Snyder to thank.
Snyder was Hollywood's go-to makeup artist during Welch's prime and also ensured that
other actresses like Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, and Doris Day all looked flawless.
Immaculate makeup certainly helps, but what does Welch herself think of her looks?
She confessed on Life Stories,
"I don't find myself even the littlest bit sexy, but I can pretend.
I'm not in love with myself, or anything close to it.
I always think I could do something with this.
It's more like every other woman in the world, I come in and I think, 'Oh, it's you again.'"
"Wherever it is that you have a little something, something, here, or there, or over here, you
just stick it."
"Could you demonstrate on my forehead, perhaps?"
Just like her sixties Tinseltown peers, Welch has sported some iconic big hair.
The bouffant, with its copious amounts of hairspray and backcombing, was a signature
look of the era, as it taught countless women that bigger is certainly better.
Of course, in more recent years, Welch has ditched the groovy 'do and is now a different
kind of hair icon.
Pivoting to the world of fake hair, she's found herself in the position of being a premium
wig designer.
Making her wigs in collaboration with HairUWear, her styles are countless, and she's often
seen modeling most of them, too.
She even wears wigs in her everyday life, and has admitted in her autobiography,
"With the aid of a wig, I have more versatility in my life, and so can you!"
In fact, she even showed up for a 2012 interview with Slate donning one of her own wigs, affectionately
patting it in the process.
Her tips to optimize the look of the wig include hanging it upside-down overnight and clipping
it to a coat hanger so that by morning it will be perfectly fluffed.
"I"m not sure perfection is possible in the real world, but my new couture hair collection
comes pretty close."
After almost 40 years of playing Anglo roles and having her own Latino father dismiss his
heritage upon moving to the United States, Raquel Welch finally began embracing her Latina
side in the early 2000s.
In a 2002 interview with The New York Times, she revealed,
"I'm happy to acknowledge it and it's long overdue and it's very welcome.
There's been kind of an empty place here in my heart and also in my work for a long, long
time.''
That emptiness started when Welch was a little girl.
She wrote in her autobiography that her dad seemed, quote, "indifferent to his heritage."
This made her feel that there was something wrong with being from Bolivia, his home country.
As she grew up and her star rose with her, different people attempted to stifle her roots.
While she was one of Tinseltown's biggest pinup girls in the sixties, Hollywood execs
tried to get her to dye her hair blonde and change her first name.
While she did change her hair color, she refused the name change.
As she revealed on Life Stories,
"[People in Hollywood] said, 'Nobody would remember that name, Raquel...We think you
should be called Debbie.
I was a little bit ornery and I felt, 'I'm not giving it up.
If I'm worth anything they'll remember it."
It turns out, they most definitely did.
In her heyday, Welch was a low-key bombshell.
She never crossed the line into vulgarity, instead always maintaining a flirtatious air
of subtlety.
In a 2012 interview with Men's Health, she recalled James Coburn, her co-star in the
1973 film The Last of Sheila, once telling her how he believes in the attractive power
of "a little mystery."
She agreed and added,
"He was so right about that.
When you put it all out there, there’s nothing left to the imagination."
While Welch hasn't renounced her flesh-baring past, she now identifies as a strong feminist.
In an interview upon the release of her autobiography in 2010, she declared,
"Do we really have to go so far where nothing is happening unless we’re getting graphic?
Can’t we use our imagination anymore?
A woman is a wonderful thing.
We are a real prize to be won.
It’s not an easy role to play, but a beautiful and powerful one."
Having been in showbiz for decades, Welch is a veteran at dodging photographers, and
she now enjoys helping out younger actresses who are new on the block.
Affectionately dubbing herself "Mama Duck," she discussed her peculiar nickname with GQ
in 2012.
Painting the picture of a young and beautiful actress having dinner at the same spot she
was, Welch dished,
"She wanted to leave out the backdoor of a very uncelebrated restaurant because there
were a few paparazzi in the front.
And I said, 'You're going to have to go all the way down the back alley?...Just go out
that door, get into your car and leave.'...And she said, 'You're just going to walk out the
front like that?'
And I said, 'Well, I have to.
My car's out there.'"
This wasn't the first time Welch was around to give advice, either.
Her close friend, the late Burt Reynolds, once approached her for help after he posed
in his birthday suit on a bearskin rug in an issue of Cosmopolitan.
Reynolds apparently had mixed feelings about the centerfold, so Welch offered her two cents:
"There's one thing about public image and the press.
And there's another thing about what you really do.
Sometimes they're not exactly in sync but it's okay because it's just the way the game
goes."
Welch already had two children from her first marriage when she started her career in Hollywood,
a son named Damon and a daughter named Tahnee.
As it turns out, Tahnee has followed in her mother's footsteps and pursued acting.
She's mostly known for her role in the 1985 sci-fi flick Cocoon.
Unfortunately, Raquel had a strained relationship with her children while they were growing
up.
Amidst her skyrocket to fame, she put her career first and her marriage and children
second.
During her interview with Piers Morgan on Life Stories, she got teary-eyed while regretting
the many times when she wasn't there for Damon and Tahnee.
She noted,
"I can't replace those times and it hurts me and it's hurt them probably worse because
that's their childhood and I'm their mother."
Now that Welch can objectively look back at her past, she's been trying to make amends.
In 2011, she told AARP,
"I wasn't impossible before, but in the past 10 years, I've made a concerted effort to
think about what I have to do for other people, what I owe, what my part is in whatever relationship
or situation I find myself in.
It's getting older, I guess, that makes you think that way."
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