Farewell to Raquel Welch : the iconic actress of the cinema of the sixties and seventies has died at the age of 82 after a short illness. The Tmz website writes it, citing family sources.

After her debut in small parts she had entered the collective imagination for the role of the buxom Loana in Don Chaffey's One million years ago : the film poster, released in 1966, with her in a provocative suede bikini, had become a collector's item.

Other sex symbol roles followed, including Leslie H. Martinson's Fathom (1967) opposite Anthony Franciosa and Stanley Donen's My Friend the Devil (1967), starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. Also in 1966, the only female protagonist, she had entered the science fiction film Hallucinating Journey , which had decreed its real success.

She garnered two Golden Globe nominations, winning one in 1975 for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her role as Constance Bonacieux in The Three Musketeers with Faye Dunaway and Charlton Heston.

In 1995 Empire magazine named her one of the 100 sexiest stars in the history of cinema , for Playboy she was in third place among the supersexy stars of the 20th century.

"I was happy that I had made it and that I could have had a career, but at the same time I didn't see myself like that," she wrote in her memoir "Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage" (beyond the cleavage).

Also in his career is an Italian chapter with the comedy Spara forte, più forte... I don't understand! from 1966 by Eduardo De Filippo shot between Naples and Cinecittà by Joe Levine. «Raquel turned out to be very good, especially in comedy», Marcello Mastroianni, her co-star, had praised her. In the same year Le Fate, in the episode directed by Mauro Bolognini.

(Unioneonline/D)