Raquel Welch Once Revealed the Sex Symbol Movie Role She Couldn’t Live Down
The death of icon Raquel Welch sparked conversations about her life and career and how she became a sex symbol early on. She once discussed how things could go wrong for actors like her with Johnny Carson. In their discussion, she revealed the “sex kitten” movie role she couldn’t live down for decades. But was the late-show legend prepared to let her do it then?
Raquel Welch’s early career as a sex symbol
After launching a movie career in the ’60s, Welch eventually made a name for herself as a sex symbol. She once said that leaning into “sex kitten” roles early on was a way to open other doors, noting she wasn’t “a fool” about her appeal (per Los Angeles Times).
She explained, “I realized when I came along [that] I wasn’t Meryl Streep who had been put into a bikini. I was somebody that got rocketed into the spotlight and superstardom overnight. I knew this was going to give me an opportunity and I should make the best of it.”
Welch said she thought that she’d “managed to do that,” but added that “it was not easy.”
“I didn’t want to stay in people’s minds just as a physical presence,” she declared. So, she “felt a rite of passage” when she no longer had to “run around in a bikini forever.”
She said, “It’s just so painfully uncomfortable and, in a way, kind of humiliating.”
Raquel Welch couldn’t live down her role in ‘One Million Years B.C.’
While talking to Carson on The Tonight Show in 1988, Welch said it had taken her that long to live down her role as a cave woman named Loana in the 1966 movie One Million Years B.C.
That didn’t surprise Carson, whom co-host Ed McMahon once said had a special lewdness license. That was because he was still a big fan of the film. He confessed he was “right there” anytime the movie came on cable, adding that might sound “chauvinistic” or like he was a “horny elderly man,” but he apparently really liked it.
Welch told Carson “a lot can go wrong” when an actor is seen as a sex symbol, as she experienced after that role. But she told the Los Angeles Times in 2010 that she eventually came to terms with Loana. “She’s really pretty OK,” she said about the character. “I recognize her as one part of my nature. But I just don’t want it to be my complete legacy.”
Raquel Welch died after a brief illness at 82
Welch would ultimately wed four times, and she had two kids. Her acting career reached five decades and consisted of dozens of roles in film and television, including a hilariously memorable guest appearance as herself on Seinfeld. In 1975, she won a Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy or musical for her portrayal of Constance de Bonacieux in The Three Musketeers.
At age 82, Welch died following a brief illness, her manager Steve Sauer told USA Today. Her two children survive her.
