A biography for Raquel Welchhasn’t been written yet.
“Oh I had crushes on all my leading men, I think. Oh, you know who I really had fun with? In this movie 'Mother, Jugs & Speed,' I really liked working with Harvey Keitel.”
“I take a multivitamin, I take extra C, I take chondroitin and glucosamine for my joints, I take calcium for my bones. And by the way, weight-bearing exercises can help ward off osteoporosis and yoga helps ward off arthritis.”
“The whole sex-symbol thing is part of what I do as an actress. It's a kind of character I play. It's part of me, but not the whole me.”
“People used to come knocking on my door saying, 'Your trouble is that you're a sex symbol who doesn't do enough sexy things.' I'd say to myself, 'You think that if you pressure me I'll fold.' But if I did it, all it would mean is that I sold out.”
“My father came from a country called Bolivia. He was of Spanish descent. I never went to Bolivia until I was 60 years old, but apparently when he was 17, he had already planned his entire academic curriculum so that he could graduate high school and enter college in the United States. That's how much he wanted to come to this country.”
“I found out a long time ago that if I indulged by stuffing my face with great food, lying about reading books and watching TV or talking on the phone, I was not a happy camper.”
“I'm a hard worker, very driven, and have never expected anything to come easily. My yoga, a great rejuvenator, helped me to live down my image - this sex symbol thing. It helps me connect with myself.”
“I was a bigger-than-life persona before I was anyone in my own mind.”
“My father was Bolivian, which makes me half-Bolivian. It's where I got some of my exotic features and certainly my skin tone.”
“Without women to nurture in this world, how do - how do men get by? How do children get by? How does society get by at all?”
“In school, nobody could pronounce my name. They just called me Rocky.”
“Myra Breckenridge is the antithesis of sex symbol. She's revolutionary; she's a warrior.”
“I'm far more ready to go with the flow now because I am more accepting of myself.”
“My body is the shape I live in and it shapes the way I live.”
“I inherited good skin from my mother, and I stay away from soap, which dries it out.”
“I'd taken the bull by the horns by liberating myself and creating a career. It took guts - it was scary and chancy - but they discounted me as empty-headed: some little piece of fluff without any brain that happened to come along.”
“'My self-esteem,' 'my self-this,' 'my self-that.' Believe me, I've been there - I'm an actress. At one point, you just get nauseous with it and think, 'I have to take my mind off myself!'”
“It seemed like a wonderful honor to have the Film Society of Lincoln Center screen 'The Films of Raquel Welch.' It shows a lot of a variety in what they've chosen; it kind of runs the gamut of my film career.”
“I think it'd be wonderful if we could train young girls to be active in lots of ways and that they then wouldn't have to age at the same rate that they would if they were not more active. In other words, more physical fitness and not just the sporty kind, but the yoga, which is really important.”
“Not everybody is comfortable with my ethnicity. When I first came along in the business, they didn't really like the idea of my name being Raquel.”