Home » Brown in America, Entertainment

The price of success

From Santosh On 2 December 2009 View Comments

The Star Trek Gandhi post inspired me to look into the other desi on Star Trek – Persis Khambatta.


Lt. Ilia
Persis was a model from Bombay and somehow landed the role of Lt. Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Here’s the twist, Persis was a model from India with beautiful long locks and the role of Lt. Ilia required her to be completely bald. So did she somehow wear a wig or did she actually have to shave her head for this role?

In this behind the scenes footage for the movie, about the 6:00 minute mark, you will find the footage of the pain Persis had to go through to play this role. Remember this was the 70s and clean shaven domes for women were not in, yet, in the west or in India.

Looks like you are one of our regular visitors. Here is our RSS feed, just another way to keep up with the new posts.

  • Runa
    Persis shaved her head - it was all the news. I was always fascinated by her - remember that as a school girl - was awed by the fact that a desi girl had made it in Hollywood ( yup - I am dating myself !) .She was gorgeous - before her it was only Rita Faria (http://www.angelfire.com/ca/VinitBudhiraja/beau...) who made it on the world map !
blog comments powered by Disqus