Persis Khambatta (October 2, 1948 – August 18, 1998) was an Indian model and actress of Farsi ethnicity and Zoroastrian religion. She was born in Bombay, India.
At age 15, Khambatta became Miss India and participated in the 1965 Miss Universe pageant, but could not achieve much success in the Indian movie industry in Bollywood, partially due to her relatively Western looks, which appeared unconventional for the Indian audiences. She later entered the world of international movies. She was also a model for various companies, including Revlon. In 1975, she had a small role in The Wilby Conspiracy, and she went on to a brief movie career that included the role for which she is most recognized: as "Lieutenant Ilia", in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, (1979). She then took on roles in Nighthawks (1981) and Megaforce (1982) but she never really found success in film.
In 1979, she became the first Indian to present an Academy award.
In 1985 she returned to India and tried to establish herself as a Bollywood actress. However her sole Bollywood film Shingora was not a box-office success; she then returned to Hollywood and did some guest appearance roles on various television series, such as Mike Hammer and MacGyver.
Khambatta was seriously injured in 1980, following a car crash in Germany which left her with a large scar on her head.
In the early 1980s, Khambatta had a coronary bypass operation. In 1997 she wrote and published a coffee table book called Pride of India which featured several former Miss Indias. The book was dedicated to Mother Teresa and part of the royalties went to the Missionaries of Charity.
Her final appearance on film and TV in an acting part was that of an Indian ambassador in the pilot episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
In 1998, Khambatta was taken to the Marine Hospital in South Mumbai, India, complaining of chest pains. She died soon after of a heart attack. She was 49.
References
^ Welcome to rediff.com: Take the Movies Quiz!
External links
Persis Khambatta at the Internet Movie Database
Persis Khambatta article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
Persis Khambatta Tribute Page
Persis Khambatta - In Memoriam
Persis Khambatta - Lt. Ilia
Ageless, timeless women
Preceded by
Meher Mistry
Miss India
1965
Succeeded by
Yasmin Daji
NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 576/1000000
Post-expand include size: 2388/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 834/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persis_Khambatta"
Categories: Indian film actors | Femina Miss India winners | Miss Universe contestants | Parsis | 1948 births | 1998 deaths | People from Mumbai | Deaths by myocardial infarction
Views
Article
Discussion
Edit this page
History
Personal tools
Log in / create account
if (window.isMSIE55) fixalpha();
Navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Search
Interaction
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Donate to Wikipedia
Help
Toolbox
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Printable version Permanent linkCite this page
Languages
Deutsch
Français
Suomi
This page was last modified on 2 September 2008, at 03:14.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
if (window.runOnloadHook) runOnloadHook();