Early Life
Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, the older sister to brother James and sister Gayle. She is the daughter of Josephine Sarah (née Hall; 1909–2000), of English ancestry, and Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo (1911–1976), of Bolivian descent. Her father, an aeronautical engineer, emigrated from La Paz, Bolivia at age 17; her mother was American, the daughter of architect Emery Stanford Hall and wife Clara Louise Adams.
As a young girl, she wanted to be a performer. Her first love and ambition was ballet, which she studied from ages seven to seventeen. She gave up ballet after her instructor told her that she did not have the proper body. While a student at La Jolla High School in 1958, she won the Fairest of the Fair beauty pageant at the San Diego County Fair.
Read more about this topic: Raquel Welch
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