The reluctant sex symbol

Star with an 10 of 140 was 'ultimate pin-up"

- EMILY RETTER

SHE had just three speaking lines in the movie which catapulted her to stardom.

But it was the deerskin bikini Raquel Welch wore as only she could in the 1966 hit One Million Years BC that cemented her place in Hollywood history.

The ultimate pin-up, whose "peaceful" death aged 82 after a brief illness was announced yesterday by her manager, was nobody's fool.

In fact, her IQ was 140.

She went on to win a Golden Globe, star in 30 films and 50 TV series, while becoming a template for contemporary female action heroes.

But the brunette never dismissed that bikini (of which there were actually six).

"I'm often asked if I get sick of talking about that bikini but the truth is, I don't, she once said. "It was a major event in

my life, so why not talk about it?" Yet her sex symbol status was never something she took seriously...

"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," she said.

Born in Chicago on September 5, 1940, Jo Raquel Tejada was half-Bolivian, on her aeronautical engineer father's side and half-American.