Still got it! Raquel Welch is as beautiful today as when she emerged from the sea in 'mankind's first bikini' almost 50 years ago



Forty-six years after she emerged from the sea in mankind's first bikini, Raquel Welch is still time-haltingly beautiful.



The 71-year-old actress attended the Vanity Fair Montblanc party on Tuesday night in L.A, wearing a gold metallic dress that showed off her iconic curves.

Hailed by Playboy as The Most Desired Woman of the '70s, Welch became a sex symbol after she iemerged from the sea in a furry bikini as Loana in the 1966 film Hammer film One Million Years B.C.

Beauty undiminished: Raquel Welch, pictured right in 1966's One Million Years B.C. and at the Mont Blanc Party in LA last night

Golden girl: Raquel says she believes in ageing with grace, and she certainly seems to have done so



She went on to star as lust in Bedazzled with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

Raquel also took part in the first interracial sex scene - with Jim Brown in the 1969 film 100 Rifles - and stared as a transsexual heroine in Myra Breckenridge.

In 1974, Welch won a Golden Globe for her role in The Three Musketeers.'



A decade later in 1984, her star hadn't dimmed but she became more of a style icon as she published her Total Beauty and Fitness Program.

Can you believe she's in her 70s? It's a lucky number for Raquel, however, as she owned that particular decade



In 2007, MAC Cosmetics made her the face of its Beauty Icon series and, since June 2010, she has appeared in TV ads for Foster Grant sunglasses.

'I have pictures of me at 23 or 24, and I think, 'Oh my God, I was really once that size!' Welch said in 2008. 'But actually I think my face looks better now.'



The star has claimed she is happy to age with grace.

She once joked: 'Every time I have a birthday, every disc jockey in Hollywood starts yahooing it all over the place.

‘But if you can’t have fun as an ageing sex symbol when you hit 60, I don’t know what will become of you.'



Raquel has been married four times and has a son, Damon, 51, and daughter, Tahnee, 49.



She has said: ‘I am playing grandmothers in movies now. I’d like to be one for real, but my kids are not co-operating with me.’

Her breakthrough role: Raquel in this bikini is considered one of the defining images of the 1960s, she later donned armour for The Magic Christian with Beatles legend Ringo Starr









