Legendary Hollywood actor Raquel Welch died at her home in Los Angeles on February 15 at the age of 82. In the 1960s and 1970s, Weizhi was the hottest sexy idol in Hollywood, and her influence was no less than that of senior actors such as Marilyn Monroe.

Raquel Welch, whose real name is Raquel Tejada, was born in a Bolivian immigrant family in Chicago on September 5, 1940. She had a strong desire to perform and star dreams since she was a child. She studied ballet for ten years when she was a child, but was forced to give up because her body shape did not meet the specific requirements of a ballerina. At the age of 18, with excellent grades, she successfully entered the performance department of San Diego State University, but entered the marriage hall with her high school classmate James Welch in her sophomore year, and gave up her studies early.

Young Raquel Welch

At the age of 22, Raquel Welch separated from her husband and lived alone with her two children. Life was quite difficult. Fortunately, it didn't take long for her to meet Bole Patrick Curtis, and the trajectory of her life was completely changed. Curtis is one year older than Raquel, but he has been in Hollywood for a long time, not only because of his own hard work, but also because he has a famous relative: the great director Billy Wilder. Under the care of Patrick Curtis, Raquel Welch quickly transformed from a single mother to a sexy girl, and at his suggestion, she removed her original surname and changed her husband's surname to Welch, the reason being Tejada This surname is too Latin American, which is not conducive to the development of Hollywood.

"Wonderful Journey" stills

Soon, her beautiful appearance won the attention of Hollywood producer Saul David, who brokered 20th Century Fox Film Company to sign her a seven-year contract, and in the Fox sci-fi blockbuster "Wonderful" that she supervised. Journey" (Fantastic Voyage) let her serve as the female lead. "A Wonderful Journey" tells the story of five American brain doctors who were shrunk down and placed in a capsule to save a renegade scientist who was dying. They sneaked into the scientist's body through blood vessel injection and performed cerebrovascular surgery on him. Raquel Welch plays one of the members of the science team in the film, and finally no longer just a vase role. After "A Wonderful Journey" was released, it became a hit at the box office, and Raquel Welch quickly became a well-known first-line Hollywood star in the United States.

Not long after, Raquel Welch was seconded to 20th Century Fox by the UK's Hammer Films for the starring role in One Million Years BC, a savage tale of hominids. In the film, the primitive Lorna played by Wei Zhi wears a set of animal skin bikini that can cover sensitive parts from head to tail, fully showing the healthy beauty and wild charm of women, which caused a huge sensation in an instant.

Stills of "One Million Years B.C."

According to incomplete statistics, during the promotion and release of the film, at least 90 magazines across Europe used Raquel Welch's stills of "One Million Years BC" as their cover. After the film was released in the United States in 1967, its movie posters sold out countless times, making Raquel Welch completely synonymous with the 1960s, which was the main sexual liberation movement. In the classic film "The Shawshank Redemption" released in 1994, Andy, the actor played by Tim Robbins, posted a total of three pictorials on the cell wall, except for the classics of Rita Hayworth and Monroe In addition to the posters, the third one is Weech's bikini poster in "One Million Years BC". At the end of the film, the reason why the warden found Andy's escape channel was through this poster.

In 1965, Dali painted an abstract portrait for Wei Zhi

After that, Weizhi, who is popular all over the world, made many works in Italy, including "It Happened One Night" co-starring with Marcello Mastroianni and the assorted films "A Woman to Love" and "Four Beauties" "Figure", etc., the rest of the leading actresses in these two platter films also include European big names such as Monica Vitti, Claudia Cardinale, Jeanne Moreau and Anna Karina, almost only Weizhi is from the United States alone, and she has become the representative of Hollywood beauties in Europe.

However, compared to the previous generation of Hollywood sexy idols with Marilyn Monroe as a model, Wei Zhi, who officially became popular with "One Million Years BC", has a wild and healthy side besides sexiness, which also corresponds to the release after many years. The title of her memoir, Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage.

Raquel Welch's memoir published in 2010

In the 1960s and 1970s, Western society was undergoing drastic changes, and Hollywood movies could not stay out of it. However, how and which dramas to accept also fully reflected individual differences. In the Western film "A Hundred Rifles" released in 1969, the rebellious heroine played by Raquel Welch fell in love with the leading African-American male Jim Brown, boldly challenging Hollywood taboos; In Myra Breckinridge (Myra Breckinridge), she played another gender-ambiguous transgender protagonist, which was criticized by many conservative groups. During that time, she also acted in many westerns and action movies in a row. It is said that she did almost all the action scenes by herself, and her professionalism is really remarkable. In 1973, Weizhi also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for "The Three Musketeers".

"Myra Buckingridge" Stills

However, after entering the 1980s, as she got older, Weizhi was able to receive fewer and fewer film contracts, and most of the time she had to settle for the next best thing and switch to the TV field. In 1981, MGM Pictures planned to shoot "Cannery Row" (Cannery Row), which was adapted from John Steinbeck's novel of the same name. It had originally agreed to cast Weizhi as the leading role, but the company's executives changed their minds before the filming started. Debra Winger, who was 15 years younger than Welch, was hired to play the role. Moreover, in order to silence Yoyo, MGM announced that the temporary change of roles was due to Weizhi's lack of professional ethics, deliberately playing big names, refusing to participate in rehearsals, and so on.

Wei Zhi was filled with righteous indignation for her reputation to be tarnished for no reason. In the Hollywood environment at that time, most people would choose to swallow their anger and calm down when faced with similar encounters, but Weizhi, who has always been a strong personality, was unwilling to back down. She resolutely decided to take up legal weapons, even if she died at the same time. This film lawsuit lasted for many years, and the court did not make a final ruling until 1986, ruling that MGM lost the lawsuit and paying Weizhi US$10.8 million in compensation. There is indeed an unwritten internal rule: actresses who are over forty years old are not eligible to be the number one actress. In the end, Wei Zhi won the lawsuit, but because of breaking the unspoken rules of Hollywood, it also attracted secret resistance from various film companies, and it was difficult to get any good roles and good resources.

"Legal Blonde" Stills

In her later years, Raquel Welch still has a good face. She once played a supporting role in "Legal Blonde" and other films. The rest of the time she devoted herself to her own beauty makeup and wig brands, and also actively participated in various public welfare career, and also disclosed his identity of Bolivian descent, hoping to remind the world of Hollywood's past discrimination against Latinos. Divorced from her first husband when she was 24, she went on to marry and divorce three times, including a five-year marriage to Bole Patrick Curtis.