Raquel Welch's 'One Million Years BC' role, which launched her into sex symbol status, almost didn’t happen
Raquel Welch almost rejected the role that turned her into an international sex symbol. The actress, who died at the age of 82 on Wednesday following a brief illness, initially had no interest in playing the doeskin bikini-clad cavewoman "Loana the Fair One" in the 1966 fantasy adventure movie "One Million Years B.C." The film, a remake of the 1940 movie of the same name, is set in a fictional prehistoric time period in which cavemen lived alongside dinosaurs.The then 26-year-old actress had a contract with 20th Century Fox, which wanted to loan her to U.K.-based Hammer Studios for the project. "I told (Fox’s studio head) Dick Zanuck I didn’t think I was going to do it because it was a dinosaur movie and I didn’t want to be caught dead in a dinosaur movie," Welch told Fox News Digital in 2017.