Presenting Persis Khambatta: From Miss India to Star Trek--The Motion Picture and Beyond

In 1965, 18-year-old Persis Khambatta became the third woman to be crowned Miss India. Though she was proud of the title, Khambatta had a complicated relationship with her birth country, eventually moving to England and then to the United States. She found worldwide fame by shaving her head for the first Star Trek movie in 1979, and the following year she became the first Indian person to be a presenter at the Academy Awards. But the American film industry never forgave Khambatta for being a non-white woman who refused to do nude scenes, and, after failing to sustain a Hollywood career as either a producer or a performer, she achieved a triumph before her death in 1998 with the publication of her book Pride of India: A Tribute to Miss India. Based on contemporary news articles and primary sources, this is the first biography of Persis Khambatta. It presents the ups and downs of her remarkable life, examines her Hindi and English-language film and television work, and demonstrates the many ways she was ahead of her time as a filmmaker, feminist, and humanitarian.