‘YOU GOTTA keep fighting. They’re gonna try and knock you down, but you gotta come out fighting each time!”

That’s the advice screen queen Raquel Welch dished out to adult movie performer Tera Patrick. Miss Patrick wants to break away from her high-gloss-but-still-porny superstardom. Miss Welch read of Tera’s aspirations (in this column, actually!) and spontaneously offered a few words of encouragement.

Raquel is the sex goddess who never posed in the raw and never performed graphic love scenes, but she knows what it’s like to be objectified, and to have one’s ambitions mocked. Raquel can take a punch, and she can deliver one too. That’s why she’s still here. (And that’s why her nickname came to be “Rocky!”)

But Tera Patrick – who is still on Quentin Tarantino’s short list for his remake of Russ Meyer’s “Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!” – has a harder road to travel than, say, our friend Traci Lords. Lords did buck the system and her own adult film past. She became a legitimate (and very good!) mainstream actress in movies and on TV. Traci managed to blame her porn ventures on her extreme youth, drug-dabbling, falling into bad company. Later, after John Water’s put Traci in “Cry-Baby” and she enjoyed other successes, we met. She was, and is, a really nice girl.

THE SAVVY Miss Patrick is in her early 30s, and has made quite a lucrative business out of sex. She’s not a busty Alice in Wonderland inadvertently falling down the pornography rabbit hole. Still, she has branched out into other realms already. Tera debuted her new computer game “Saints Row” at the Comic Con in San Diego recently. It’s a big hit. She stars in the game, but, significantly, does not undress. There’s also a lingerie line and a fitness video upcoming.

I am of mixed emotions about this sort of thing – most female porn “stars” lead fairly sordid and unhappy lives. They’re not savvy; they don’t marry well. They don’t become entrepreneurs. They don’t seriously aspire to be “real” movie stars. But Miss Patrick does. So she is not typical. Neither is she a role model for women’s empowerment. (Don’t put your daughter into X-rated movies, Mrs. Worthington!) But she is where she is and knows where she wants to go from here. It’s the Pilgrim’s Progress with a bustier and a condom. In any case, it was sweet of Raquel to show her support. Miss Welch has relaxed significantly as the years have rolled by. She’ll turn a lush and gorgeous 68 next month!

And it’s funny but Raquel Welch seemed to be the classy model upon which the late, above-mentioned Russ Meyer molded his not-so-classy stable of dubious stars – with acres of cleavage and mountains of hair, all looking like Amazons on a bad day. The reality of Raquel was quite different. In person she was petite and perfectly proportioned. The ’60s mane of hair was pretty impressive, though. (Raquel’s bombshell look would be re-invented via Cindy Crawford, some 20 years later.)