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Fearless Nadia (8 January 1908 - 9 January 1996) was a famous Indian film actress and stuntwoman, who is most remembered the masked, cloaked adventuress in Hunterwali (The Princess and the Hunter) made in 1935, which was one of the earliest female lead in Indian films.
Fearless Nadia was born as Mary Ann Evans on 8 January 1908 in Perth, Western Australia. She was the daughter of Scotsman Herbertt Evans, a volunteer in the British Army, and Margaret, a Greek dancer and theatre person. They lived in Australia, before coming to India.
Mary was one year old when Herbertt's regiment was seconded to Bombay. Mary came to Bombay in 1913 at the age of five with her father. She learned horseback riding during a stay in the North-West Frontier Province and then studied ballet under Madam Astrova after returning to Bombay in the mid 1920s.
She toured India as a theatre artist and began working for Zarko Circus in 1930. She changed her name to Nadia at the insistence of a fortune-teller. She made her debut in the Arabic film Makhazane el ochak (1932), which was filmed in Egypt. She was introduced to Hindi films by J.B.H. Wadia who was the founder of Wadia Movietone, the behemoth of stunts and action in 1930s Bombay.
She made her debut in Hindi films with Lal-e-Yaman (1933). The film became a huge hit at the box-office and she became famous with doing stunts in Hindi films. She soon became known as India's Original Stunt Queen, after making more films with stunts. Her film career went from 1933 to 1970. 1935, saw the release of Hunterwali, and this was when she was nicknamed Hunterwali. Her role in the film--which had her dressed in tight, revealing clothes, tall boots, while wielding a whip--became iconic in 1930s India. She reprised the role in Hunterwali Ki Beti some years later. She played a small role in her last film which was Ek Nanhi Munni Ladki Thi (1970). She acted in a Telugu Movie around 1967-68 as a stunt woman, full length role. Shobhan Babu was the hero.
Throughout her career, Nadia had many love affairs and was linked to men of prominence. She was married twice. From her first marriage she had a son. After she was introduced to films by Mr. Wadia, she met his younger brother Homi Wadia. Soon they fell in love with each other but they didn't get married until the early 1960s, after the death of the Wadia brothers' orthodox Parsi mother who wouldn't let her son wed a "parjat". They were married in 1961. By the time they were married, Nadia was too old to have her own children. Instead, Homi adopted Nadia's son from her previous marriage. She died at Cumballa Hill Hospital in Bombay in 1996 only a day after her 88th birthday.
In 1993, Nadia's great grandnephew, Riyad Vinci Wadia, made a documentary of her life and films, called Fearless: The Hunterwali Story, after watching the documentary at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, Dorothee Wenner, a German freelance writer, and film curator, wrote a book on her which was subsequently translated to English in 2005.
