Raquel Welch

Raquel Welch (born Jo Raquel Tejada; September 5, 1940 – February 15, 2023) was an American actress and singer.

I'm not a phenomenon who exists out of time, an anachronism of sociological significance. I'm a person.

I wanted a storybook life, to be Rapunzel and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, all the beautiful ladies that wonderful men came along on their big white horses and dragged away. Which is not remarkable, a lot of kids grow up that way. But I decided it was gonna happen.

I was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one. The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous, and fortunate misunderstanding

Quotes

• Whatever my film work was, it was a departure from the sex symbol previously, who was blonde and more docile than the characters I portrayed as a sex symbol…I think it was a different role for women. Women watch other women, and they are affected by that.
  • On how she felt that her early roles were a form of liberation in “Body of Work: Screen Siren Raquel Welch Gets Her Lincoln Center Retrospective” in The Observer (New York, February 7, 2012)

• A lot of times I would play a lot of roles a man would play…In One Million Years B.C.—yes, the costume was revealing. But I was outdoors all the time, I was fighting to survive, there was a girlfight. I was participating, it was physical, and I was independent. I wasn’t that pushover kind of a girl. And I think that left an impression.
  • On how she felt her roles were masculine in “Body of Work: Screen Siren Raquel Welch Gets Her Lincoln Center Retrospective” in The Observer (New York, February 7, 2012)

• It’s not that I wanted to go into the male mentality, but into the duality. There’s a duality in every man and every woman. And when you have a homosexual man who’s a movie critic and he wants to make himself into a woman who somehow resembles a film goddess, like the women in film from 1935-1945, and then you have to watch how she interacts with these young people who have know idea who they’re really dealing with. The film never could embrace the different layers of complications of what’s going on with Myra/Myron…
  • On her role in the cult classic film Myra Breckenridge in “The GQ&A: Raquel Welch” in GQ (February 10, 2012)

• I was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one. The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous, and fortunate misunderstanding.
  • Quoted in "40 stunning snapshots of Raquel Welch" Purple Clover (August 31, 2017)

"Raquel Welch Speaks Her Mind"

Rolling Stone Magazine (July 10, 2017)

• I wanted a storybook life, to be Rapunzel and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, all the beautiful ladies that wonderful men came along on their big white horses and dragged away. Which is not remarkable, a lot of kids grow up that way. But I decided it was gonna happen.
• In high school I was Rocky, then after the equipment arrived, Hotrocks.
• You have to work with people, whatever assholes they might be.
• The mind is an erogenous zone.
• I am really fed up doing second-rate roles in mediocre films and working against the prejudice that comes with my "image." I have studied all my life. I am not trying to become an actress, I am an artist and an actress.
• I'm not a phenomenon who exists out of time, an anachronism of sociological significance. I'm a person.