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Sexagenarian
Welch highlights her roots
 Raquel
Welch has just turned 60 but, rather than discussing
her age, she wants belatedly to highlight her Hispanic
roots.
“Let’s concentrate on the idea of the Hispanic
Heritage Awards,” Welch, who co-hosted the annual
event this month, said in an interview. “It is
a kind of belated opportunity for me to embrace my Hispanic
heritage, which I really haven’t done much of during
the course of my career.”
The actress was born Raquel Tejada in Chicago. Her Bolivian
father had emigrated to the United Sates in the early
1930s.
“He experienced a lot of pain and prejudice when
he came here and, as a result, he never spoke a word
of Spanish in the house when we were growing up, and
he never explained to us we had a Latin heritage,”
said Welch, who still cannot speak Spanish and has never
visited her father’s homeland.
It was not until she was 8 or 9 that she realised she
was named Raquel after her paternal grandmother in Bolivia.
“He made a very decided effort to distance himself
from his Latin heritage because he felt he was going
to be held back by it. He clearly had a sense of shame
and that was somewhat passed on to me ... that it (being
Hispanic) was something not quite right and I think
that was damaging even if I didn’t know why.”
In her career, Welch took the same route as fellow Hollywood
siren Rita Hayworth, who was of Mexican extraction and
did not hide her Latin heritage but did not emphasise
it either.
“It wasn’t that I avoided it but I already
had enough trouble with the sex symbol thing, I didn’t
need to have the Latino thing thrown in for good measure,”
Welch said.
“That was a huge battle. I don’t care now.
Look at me, I am so down the pike now in my life nobody
is going to hire me to be the new nubile beauty of the
moment so I don’t have to worry,” Welch said
modestly.
Still petite and curvaceous, she betrayed her age only
when she slipped a pair of glasses from the front of
her gown to read the teleprompter at the awards. “What
is left from my reputation works for me because women
seem to identify with the fact that I maintain myself,”
said Welch, who makes fitness videos and has her Signature
Collection of wigs and a skin care line.
“But in the beginning and all through my career
it was another one of those things where it was a double-edged
sword, where it was my claim to fame and it was out-eclipsing
all of my other abilities.”
In comparison to the sex kitten image, her heritage
caused her less ‘growing pains’ since she
does not look decidedly Hispanic and could be French,
Italian or Greek, she said. But she said she initially
tried to play down her exotic looks.
“There was a period where I tried to look like
Mary TylerMoore,” the ’60s American sweetheart
and television star. “It really didn’t work
and I told myself, What are you doing? You know you
have the blood, that fire in you, and if you put that
out that will be against who you are. You know you are
hot.”
Welch reportedly auditioned for the girl-next-door role
of Mary Ann on the ’60s television show Gilligan’s
Island. But her career took off when she donned a fur
bikini and fled from dinosaurs in 1966’s One Million
Years BC.
“It was curious that I was really discovered with
my hairdyed blond in One Million Years BC by the British
and that translated into making me an international
star all over Europe and the world,” she said.
By the time she came back to the United States, she
was already a big name. “I don’T think ethnicity
is so terribly important outside the United States.
It’s a funny kind of thing here because sometimes
it really plays in your favour and sometimes it really
bites you in the butt as it’s not want people want
and they can’t see around it.”
Not being pigeonholed in ethnic roles, Welch went on
to star in the film Fantastic Voyage, in which she was
injectd into a man’s bloodstream in a miniature
submarine.
It was only recently, after she acted in a sitcom about
a Latino family in Los Angeles that was rejected by
the network, that people began to consider her for Latin
film projects.
Welch has just finished another film, tentatively entitled
Tortilla Soup, a remake of Ang Lee’s Taiwanese
arthouse hit Eat Drink Man Woman transplanted to L.A.’s
Latino community.
Although she plays a grandmother who has her eye on
Hector Elizondo of television’s Chicago Hope, Welch
said she is “not in a gray wig and a rocker.”
“I do wish I was a grandmother,” she mused.
“Unfortunatelymy children are not cooperating.”
Daughter Tahnee, whose credits include the alien movie
Cocoon and made-for-cable Body and Soul, has yet to
achieve her mother’s fame. Son Damon is a computer
consultant with “aspirations in the back of his
mind somewhere to be an actor, but he hasn’t really
followed that urge at this point.”
What about rumours that Welch plans to become a mother
again,using a surrogate mother, after her marriage last
year to pizza chain prince Richie Palmer, nearly 15
years her junior?
“Oh goodness no! Absolutely no!” she exclaimed.
“That is funnier than me playing a grandmother.”
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