Product Code Database
Mary Ann Evans (8 January 1908 – 9 January 1996), also known by her stage name Fearless Nadia, was an Australian-Indian actress and stuntwoman, who worked in Indian cinema. She is most remembered as the masked, cloaked adventurer in Hunterwali, released in 1935, which was one of the earliest female-led Indian films.
In 1915, her father’s untimely death at the hands of Germans during World War I prompted the family’s move to Peshawar (now in Pakistan). She learnt horseback riding, hunting, fishing, and shooting during a stay in the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
During the 1920s, Evans returned to Bombay (now Mumbai) with her mother and a son, Robert Jones, about whom not much is known, and then studied ballet under Madam Astrova.
She had earlier tried her hand at a job in the Army & Navy Store in Bombay (Mumbai) as a salesgirl and had at one point wanted to learn "short-hand and typing to get a better job". Astrova’s troupe performed for British soldiers at military bases, for Indian royalty, and for other crowd in small towns and villages. She mastered the art of cartwheels and splits, which came in handy later during her film stunts. An Armenian fortune teller had foretold that a successful career lay ahead but she would have to choose a name starting with the letter ‘N’. She chose the name Nadia because it was "exotic-sounding".
In 1993, Nadia's 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 Fearless Nadia: The true story of Bollywood's original stunt queen, which was subsequently translated into English in 2005. In Vishal Bharadwaj's Hindi film Rangoon, the role played by Kangana Ranaut was inspired by Nadia.
To commemorate her 100th birthday, in 2015 the Government of India issued a postage stamp with her likeness.
On 8 January 2018, Google displayed a doodle paying tribute to Fearless Nadia’s 110th birthday. The artist commissioned for the doodle was the Indian comic illustrator Devaki Neogi. In the same year, the University of Melbourne and the Australia India Institute published a collection of original essays entitled Fearless Nadia Occasional Papers.
| 1935 ! scope="row" | Hunterwali (A Woman with a Whip) | Princess Madhuri a.k.a. Hunterwali | |
| 1936 ! scope="row" | Miss Frontier Mail | Savita a.k.a. Miss Frontier Mail | |
| 1938 ! scope="row" | Lutaru Lalna (Dacoit Damsel or The Dacoit Girl) | Indira | |
| 1939 ! scope="row" | Punjab Mail | ||
| 1940 ! scope="row" | Diamond Queen | Madhurika | |
| 1941 ! scope="row" | Bambaiwali (The Girl from Bombay) | ||
| 1942 ! scope="row" | Jungle Princess | ||
| 1942 ! scope="row" | Muqabala | Madhuri | |
| 1943 ! scope="row" | Hunterwali Ki Beti | Princess Madhuri a.k.a. Hunterwali | |
| 1943 ! scope="row" | Mauj | ||
| 1948 ! scope="row" | 11 O'Clock | Lakshmi | |
| 1949 ! scope="row" | Dhoomketu (The Comet) | ||
| 1953 ! scope="row" | Jungle Ka Jawahar (Hero of the Forest) | Mala | |
| 1956 ! scope="row" | Jungle Queen | ||
| 1956 !Baghdad Ka Jadu | Yasmina | ||
| 1968 ! scope="row" | Khiladi |
|
|
