Raquel Welch – Her Career, Being Difficult & Some Gossip

https://haphazardstuff.com/raquel-welch-career-reputation-difficult-gossip/

Raquel Welch is one of the most popular Hollywood sex symbols in the world.

It was her appearance as Luana the Fair One from One Million Years B.C. that electrified the world. The photograph of her standing in a desolate landscape wearing her prehistoric bikini would become emblazoned on the pop culture consciousness. Raquel would instantly become one of the most popular women in the 1960’s and that image would follow her for the rest of her career.

During the height of her fame in the 1960’s and 70’s Raquel was the most photographed woman on the planet. Her image adorned countless posters, magazines and billboards all around the world. She was the ultimate fantasy woman that men dreamed of while lovingly staring at her shapely figure in bikini poses.

Aside from being known for her sexy physique, Raquel also gained a notorious reputation of being one of the most difficult actresses in Hollywood. Horror stories about her temperamental behavior, unprofessional attitude and lack of respect towards others on film sets have become legendary and stuck with her through most of her career.

She has been labeled as one of showbiz’s biggest uptight divas and there’s no shortage of stories and gossip about her behavior that demonstrates it.

I got curious as to how Raquel gained this terrible reputation. So, I started perusing for ‘dirt’ of her difficult behavior and feuds she’s had with those who worked with her. It didn’t take long to find some of the more famous tales, particularly revolving around the production of Myra Breckinridge.

But digging a bit deeper and scouring the darkest corners of the internet, I started to find more and more unflattering stories about her from almost all of her films and projects she’s been involved in. It started to become quite the list!

To put it bluntly, one might like to admire her looking spectacular in a bathing suit, but if you had to work with her – it sounds like it would absolutely be no picnic!

It is kind of strange when I think most casual moviegoers wouldn’t be able to name a movie that Raquel Welch starred in. They probably know who she is and that she was a famous pinup at one point, but after so many years in the spotlight and appearing in over thirty films and doing many television performances and roles, most people’s familiarity with Raquel begins and ends with her playing a cavegirl in that old dinosaur movie.

Their knowledge of her might even only extend to her pinup poster showing up in The Shawshank Redemption or that she has a popular wig line. She really hasn’t had many memorable acting career high points.

Let me say upfront – I can’t confirm any of this stuff! These are stories I culled from internet searching, and we all know (or should know) not to place much stock in what’s floating around out there, no matter how many times it gets repeated.

However, I was enjoying myself so much finding these horror stories about Raquel’s alleged temperamental behavior, trivia about her film productions, the disrespectful attitude she unleashed on sets and quotes from some of her fellow actors and crew about her, I thought it would be fun to just pool all of what I found together, lay them out and let you decide of the validity of some of these stories – or at least be entertained by some of this Hollywood lore.

They come from all different sources, interviews, newspaper articles, excerpts from books. I’m not about to pinpoint where exactly I found each one because I’m too lazy.

Let’s be fair though, there are always two sides to every story (or in some cases more than that, as we will see), so in her defense I’m sure Raquel has a different interpretation as to what’s been written about her in this area.

It’s quite easy to consider that she was unfairly labeled ‘difficult’ for being so outspoken, resisting to go along with how others wanted to pigeonhole her as ‘the sexy bombshell’ and simply wanting to be in more control of her image and the direction of her career.

Still, I think it’s fair to say she has a very long history of her notorious ‘diva-like’ conduct. So much so…it’s pretty hard to ignore it all and not think, ‘there’s gotta be some truth behind at least some of it’.

So, sit back and let’s follow Raquel’s climb to stardom, her career, stories about her various projects, some rumors and gossip, her alleged temperamental behavior and how she managed to get the reputation of being one of Hollywood’s most difficult and worst actresses one could ever work with.

As one studio executive referred to her as being a “ruthless bitch!“

This should be fun!

Because of the tremendous length of this I’m providing a table of contents to make things easier for readers to navigate through this colossal collection of stories.