Raquel Welch (born Jo Raquel Tejada; September 5, 1940) is an American actress and singer.
Welch posed for Playboy magazine in 1979, but she never did a fully nude shoot. Hugh Hefner later wrote, "Raquel Welch, one of the last of the classic sex symbols, came from the era when you could be considered the sexiest woman in the world without taking your clothes off. She declined to do complete nudity, and I yielded gracefully. The pictures prove her point." Welch has refused to take all her clothes off on screen or pose naked throughout her career spanning five decades, saying this was the way she was brought up. While her image in the 1960s was that of a torrid sex temptress, Welch's private life was quite different. She once famously said, "What I do on the screen is not to be equated with what I do in my private life. Privately, I am understated and dislike any hoopla". She also admitted, "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".
"I was always willing to take a great deal of the burden of getting along in life on my own shoulders, but I wasn't willing to give myself a pat on the back. I was always looking to somebody else to give me that...That was all wrong."
"Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow your own instincts—only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied, and when you are, other people will tend to be satisfied by what you do."
Raquel says the lesson for every aging woman is to embrace it. "I want them to stop being scared of it, because it's just another chapter in life," she says. "It's not time for you to give up. You don't need to repeat what you did already. Don't keep comparing yourself."
Raquel says she likes to think of aging gracefully as a game. "We might as well make up our minds to play it or just bow out and be spectators," she says. "Sitting around doing nothing is far from the best option. Just as you maintain your home, your car, your garden, you should look after your greatest gift: your body."
At 73 years old
