US Actress, Raquel Welch Is Dead at 82

Raquel Welch, the US actress who became an international s3x symbol after appearing in a deerskin bikini in “One Million Years BC,” is dead.

She died on Wednesday, her manager said.

She was 82.

Welch’s manager said in an emailed statement to AFP that she had died peacefully early on Wednesday morning after “a brief illness,” without providing further details.

The Golden Globe winner starred in more than 30 films — including “Fantastic Voyage” and “The Three Musketeers” — as well as some 50 television series in a career spanning five decades.

Welch, born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940, grew up in California, and won several beauty titles in her teens.

She launched her acting career with a string of walk-on parts in minor films, including the 1964 musical feature “Roustabout” starring Elvis Presley.

Her break came when she was picked by the 20th Century Fox studio to star in the 1966 science fiction film “Fantastic Voyage”.

The same year she had a leading role in “One Million Years BC,” a fantasy film famous mainly for Welch’s bikini-clad cavewoman.

While the film received mediocre reviews, Welch’s image on its poster became part of cinema history.

She would later struggle to avoid being typecast, writing in her 2010 autobiography “Beyond the Cleavage” that “all else would be eclipsed by this bigger-than-life sex symbol.”