Raquel Welch has passed away. She rose to fame in the 1960s and 1970s as an international sex icon after emerging from the sea in a skimpy, furry bikini in the movie One Million Years B.C. She was 82.
According to Welch’s agent Stephen LaManna of the talent agency Innovative Artists, she passed away early on Wednesday morning following a brief illness.
Despite only having three lines in the silly prehistoric film One Million Years B.C. from 1966, Welch had a breakthrough performance. She managed to avoid pterodactyls while wearing a brown doeskin bikini, but not the attention of the general public.
“I just thought it was a goofy dinosaur epic we’d be able to sweep under the carpet one day,” she told The Associated Press in 1981. “Wrong. It turned out that I was the Bo Derek of the season, the lady in the loin cloth about whom everyone said, ‘My God, what a bod’ and they expected to disappear overnight.”
She did not, playing Lust for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their film Bedazzled in 1967 and playing a secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom that same year.
Her curves and beauty captured pop culture attention, with Playboy crowning her the “most desired woman” of the ’70s, despite never being completely naked in the magazine. In 2013, she graced the No. 2 spot on Men’s Health’s “Hottest Women of All Time” list.
