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She was the dream girl for boys of all ages during the '70s,
and she's still turning heads today.
[Gabriela Zabalua-Goddard - Editor, AARP Viva] Tell me a little bit about how it feels to age the way you're aging--
beautifully, healthfully--in front of cameras, publicly.
How are you doing it?
Well, it takes an awful lot of work, I have to tell you, but this is my job.
[Raquel Welch - Actress]
A lot of women, I think, might have retired a long time ago,
but I have found that I enjoy the entrepreneurial opportunities that are there for me.
Among them, the release of her memoir Raquel - Beyond the Cleavage.
It became a New York Times Bestseller.
I tried to cover all the girly-talk things that all girls talk about.
There's all the beauty tips and everything,
and then there's the diet, and then there's the exercise,
and then there's so many areas that women are concentrated on
in order to be the kind of woman that they want to be.
But the woman she wanted to be has been a struggle.
Raquel's sex-symbol image was sealed with the release of the film
One Million Years B.C. and it's best-selling pinup poster,
but she has striven for years to create a different image.
I would really like at this point in my life just to be who I am,
just to tell about my ideas, my attitudes towards being a woman,
about my how my early stardom was really built as a single mother
who was struggling to raise my children, and also to break into a very difficult business.
Born to a Bolivian father and his American wife,
Jo Raquel Tejada was a high school beauty queen.
At 18, she left college to marry her high school sweetheart, and the first of her four husbands.
I was madly in love with him. I could not be deterred. I could not be told no.
You tell in your book that you knew this was the man you would have your children with.
Oh, the first second I saw him, I said, "That is the man I am going to have babies with."
I have a son Damon and a daughter Latonne, and gosh, we made beautiful kids.
After the marriage ended, Raquel ventured to Hollywood with two kids in tow.
Her beauty and talent opened the door to a career of more than 45 films,
and later, onto theater and television.
What are the things you regret from that time in your life--the challenges as a single mom?
That is a hard one. That's the really hardest one, probably.
I think that you have to tell yourself at one point that you're not going to have it all,
that there is a price to pay, and it hurts the kids.
It's one of those things that you spend the rest of your life
trying to fix in some way, trying to compensate for.
Recognition of her talent as a serious actress came in 1973
when she won the Golden Globe for her performance on The Three Musketeers.
In 1981, she one critical acclaim for her work on Broadway in Woman of the Year.
But it was not until 2002 that Welch explored her Latina roots
in the PBS drama series American Family.
Raquel, when did you start going back and trying to reconnect with your Hispanic roots
that really were not totally introduced to you as a child?
Well, I always really felt quite a bit like a Latina.
I really did, because my father was Latin,
and even though he never spoke Spanish in our home,
he was just so Latin in his demeanor
and his attitude and his pride and all of these things.
I am really Latina, because in my heart there's a lot of passion,
a lot of sensitivity, a lot of hotbloodedness.
So in my soul, I'm very positive that I am Raquelita Tejada Welch, and I always will be.
In 1998, Raquel developed a line of wigs and hair extensions for Hair You Wear.
Since 2004, and inspired by her sister's battle with ovarian cancer,
Raquel and Hair You Wear have donated more than $1 million worth of wigs annually
to the American Cancer Society.
If they have, when they're losing their hair, a wig to put on to go out into the world
and not feel like an oddball, not feel like they're the center of attention,
and also to feel better about themselves, then they don't have to look in the mirror anymore
and think, "Oh my hair, the cancer is winning."
Single again, Raquel is spending more time with friends and family.
Getting older has given her the freedom to be who she really wants to be.
That's the good thing about getting a little older.
You really do start to look at things and make a different assessment,
and I think that that's a such valuable, important and satisfying thing to look forward to.
I think that getting older is not all that bad, really.
[Executive Producer - Nina Halper, Producer - Dianela Urdaneta]
[Field Producer - Marc Mottern, Editors - Don Fish and Pati Abeo]
[Camera - Tom Tanquary, Rob Macey, Audio - Bill Schenker]
[AARP VIVA Photographer - Art Streiber, Design Director AARP VIVA - Gina Toole-Sanders]
[Photo Director AARP VIVA - Marisa Zanganeh]
[Stock photography - Corbis Images, Everett Collection, Getty Images]
[AARP VIVA]