Early life
Welch was innate Jo Raquel Tejada within Chicago, Illinois, the oldest of three babies born to Armando Carlos Tejada & Josephine Sarah Hall. Her father was an immigrant from Bolivia of Castilian Spanish extraction who was an aerospace engineer, and her mother an United States native of Irish descent.

Around 1942, Armand Tejada was transferred to San Diego, California. A personal moved to the suburbia of La Jolla, where Raquel grew up. She took dancing lessons as the child, & was winning beauty pageants per period she was a stripling. Among her titles were "Miss Photogenic," "Miss La Jolla," "Miss Contour," & "Miss San Diego." Inside 1957, she was named "Miss Fairest of the Fair" at a San Diego County Fair. When high she entered San Diego State College on a theater arts scholarship. the as a consequence season she married a high school sweetheart, James Welch.

Career
Inside 1959, Raquel Welch played the name part in the celebrated Ramona Pageant, a each year outdoor play at Hemet, California, which is based on a novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson.

Welch became the weather forecaster at a local San Diego television station. Because of her heavily schedule, she decided to leave college. Her marriage broke higher & she moved by having her ii toddlers to Dallas, Texas, where she modeled for Neiman-Marcus and worked as a cocktail hostess, intending to move on to New York City from there.

Instead, she retreat to California. She noticed the place within Los Angeles and started making a cycles of the movie studios. She was cast inside minor role around Deuce films & tv program like Bewitched, ''McHale's Navy, The Hollywood Palace, and The Virginian''. Welch's number 1 featured role was within ''A Swingin' Summer, which led to a contract with 20th Century Fox. She was so cast in the Sci-fi hit Fantastic Voyage, which finally manufactured her the star.

In loan bent Hammer Studios in Britain, she starred in the remake of One Million Years B.C.. Fallowing her appearance when Lust incarnate in Bedazzled, she returned to the United States and appeared within the Western with James Stewart and Dean Martin titled Bandolero!, which was followed by Lady in Cement with Frank Sinatra. Her number 1 real starring role was inside Myra Breckinridge with Mae West, which turned out to become the gloomy failure.

Despite pack professional disappointments, Welch became one of a leading sex symbols of the 1960s and 1970s. Her virtually all memorable publicity still, where she was clad within the furred beast-skin bikini for One Million Years B.C., became a bestselling poster.

Welch was due to star in the 1982 adaptation of Cannery Row, but was fired per producers pro Debra Winger. She with success sued, however this profits ended her film acting career. Her television appearances include a series The Hollywood Palace, the mass produced for TV pic The Legend of Walks Far Woman and Right to Die'', inside which she turned in the stirring performance as a woman using Lou Gehrig's disease, and in the PBS series American Family, about a Mexican American family in East Los Angeles. She has besides appeared at night period soap opera CPW and made infomercials and exercise videos. When she never appeared on the indicate, her title was ofttimes utilized as an 100%-general-purpose guide on the game indicate Match Game.

She has as well performed around the nightclub act in Las Vegas and has starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year and in Victor/Victoria, where she replaced Julie Andrews.

Personal life
She has been married to James Welch (1959-1962), publicist and agent; Patrick Curtis (who played a young child of Olivia de Havilland in Gone with the Wind) (1967-1972), writer; Andre Weinfeld (1980-1990); and Richard Palmer (1999).

She is the mother of Damon Welch & actress Tahnee Welch.

Achievements and awards
Around 1974, Raquel Welch won a Golden Globe for even Best Motion Picture Actress inside the Musical theater or Comedy for The Three Musketeers. She was too nominated for the Golden Earth for her performance in the TV drama Right to Die (1988).

She has the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Filmography
A House Is Not a Home (1964) Roustabout (1964) ''A Swingin' Summer (1965) The Queens (1966) Fantastic Voyage (1966) One Million Years B.C. (1966) Shoot Loud, Louder... I Don't Understand (1966) Think Twentieth (1967) (short subject) The Oldest Profession (1967) Fathom (1967) Bedazzled (1967) The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968) Bandolero! (1968) Lady in Cement (1968) 100 Rifles (1969) Flareup (1969) The Magic Christian (1969) The Beloved (1970) Myra Breckinridge (1970) Hannie Caulder (1971) Bluebeard (1972) Fuzz (1972) Kansas City Bomber (1972) The Last of Sheila (1973) The Three Musketeers (1973) The Four Musketeers (1974) The Wild Party (1975) Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976) The Animal (1977) Crossed Swords (1978) Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994) (Cameo) Chairman of the Board (1998) What I Did for Love (1998) Tortilla Soup (2001) Legally Blonde (2001) Jim Brown: All American (2002) (documentary) Forget About It (2005)

Television work
The Hollywood Palace (regular performer around 1964) Raquel! (1970) Mork & Mindy (1979) - "Captain Nirvana" in "Mork vs. The Necrotons" The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1982) Right to Die (1987) Scandal in a Small Town (1988) Trouble in Paradise (1989) Tainted Blood (1993) Torch Song (1993) Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby (1994) (voice) Central Park West (1995) (pilot for series of same title) Central Park West (cast member in 1996) Seinfeld (1997) Spin City (1997,1998 and 2000) - "Abby Lassiter" in the episodes "Porn in the U.S.A.", "A River Runs Through Me" & "Balloons over Broadway" American Family'' (2002-2004)