Raquel Welch: Pin-up girl and comic star

Raquel Welch, who died aged 82, had only three lines as Loana in the 1966 film fantasy 'One Million Years BC' but attained sex-symbol status from the role, in which she was dressed in a fur-lined bikini. The image made its imprint in popular culture and the publicity poster sold millions.

The tale of cavepeople coexisting with dinosaurs was Welch’s breakthrough film – and the beginning of a largely unsuccessful battle she waged to be taken seriously as an actor. When she arrived on set, she told the director, Don Chaffey, she had been thinking about her scene. She recalled his response as: “Thinking? What do you mean you’ve been thinking? Just run from this rock to that rock – that’s all we need from you.”

Welch had to contend with critics who believed her looks to count for more than any acting ability she possessed. Welch later showed her aptitude for comedy when she played Constance, the French queen’s married seamstress in love with Michael York’s D’Artagnan, in the 1973 swashbuckler 'The Three Musketeers'. The performance won her a Golden Globe best actress award and she reprised the part in 'The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge' (1974).

She took roles on television and worked up an act as a nightclub singer that she took across the US. She showed her performing mettle when she made her Broadway stage debut. Welch said: “I have exploited being a sex symbol and I have been exploited as one. I wasn’t unhappy with the sex goddess label. I was unhappy with the way some people tried to diminish, demean and trivialise anything I did professionally.”

She was born Jo-Raquel Tejada in Chicago, Illinois, to Josephine (nee Hall) and Armando Tejada. Her father, an aeronautical engineer, was Bolivian.