Persis Khambatta (c) Elisa Leonelli 1983
Not many people remember her today, but I have a special affection for Persis Khambatta, the Indian actress and model who passed away of a heart attack 25 years ago, in 1998, at the young age of 49, in Mumbai, the city where she was born.
I photographed her backstage at the Golden Globes, on January 29, 1980, where she had been invited as a presenter, after becoming instantly famous upon the release of the movie Star Trek on December 7, 1979.
Persis Khambatta (c) Elisa Leonelli 1983
The beautiful actress had agreed to shave her head to play Lieutenant Ilia, born on planet Delta IV, who comes aboard Starship Enterprise as the new navigator, and is recognized by Captain Willard Decker (Stephen Collins), who had a romantic relationship with her years prior.
Persis Khambatta (c) Elisa Leonelli 1981
The second time I photographed her was on May 5, 1981, during an exclusive interview for the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press about the movie Nighthawks, where she played a terrorist opposite Sylvester Stallone. I asked her about the status of women in India and the responsibility she felt, having been able to make a career for herself abroad. I was impressed by her intelligence and self confidence, her moral and religious beliefs as a Zoroastrian from a Parsi family.
Persis Khambatta (c) Elisa Leonelli 1983
A couple of years later, upon learning that she was about to shoot a movie in Italy, I asked her to do a home photo layout, and she generously posed for me in her apartment wearing different outfits. I then photographed her in Rome in summer 1983 on the set of Warriors of the Lost World with her costars Robert Ginty and Donald Pleasance.
Persis Khambatta (c) Elisa Leonelli 1983
She had hoped that women could play leading roles in movies, as John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro had done, but it was too early in the 1980s for that to happen. She was ahead of her time.
To honor her memory, I wrote an article about Persis Khambatta for the Golden Globes website, that you may read at this link.
Text and photos by Elisa Leonelli