Meet Fearless Nadia, The First Indian Stuntwoman

The globe was trembling in the late 1930s due to the impending war, and superheroes in particular, who acted as mythical rescue rangers, offered the public a way to escape into a fantastical world where these larger-than-life heroes would solve all of the world's problems.

Actress and stuntwoman Mary Ann Evans (born 8 January 1908; died 9 January 1996) was an Australian-Indian who acted in Indian films under the stage name Fearless Nadia. Her most famous role is that of the veiled, shrouded explorer in the 1935 Indian film Hunterwali, one of the first with a female lead.

Nadia's Way to Indian Cinema

In Perth, Western Australia, on January 8, 1908, Mary Ann Evans gave birth to fearless Nadia. Her parents were Margret and Scotsman Herbert Evans, who volunteered in the British Army. Before moving to India, they resided in Australia. When Herbertt's regiment was seconded to Bombay, Mary was a year old. When Mary was five years old, her father and she traveled to Bombay in 1913.

Following her father's premature death in 1915 at the hands of German forces during World War I, the family relocated to Peshawar, which is now in Pakistan. During her visit to the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), she acquired skills in shooting, fishing, hunting, and horseback riding.

In 1930, after touring India as a theatrical performer, she started working for Zarko Circus. Jamshed "J.B.H." Wadia, the man behind Wadia Movietone, the massive action and stunt company in 1930s Bombay, introduced her to Hindi cinema. J.B.H. was initially perplexed by Mary's insistence on trying out for the movies, but he took a chance and gave her a cameo in the Desh Deepak movie as a slave girl (with a hand-painted color sequence that highlighted her blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes), and later in Noor-e-Yaman as Princess Parizaad. 

She also appeared in a few more films, but Hunterwali, which debuted in 1935 and featured amazing acrobatics performed entirely by Nadia, captured everyone's interest. Following the enormous popularity of her film, she gained notoriety as "Hunterwali."

Nadia was a game changer when it came to women playing princesses or queens in motion pictures. The superwoman who famously declared, "I'll try everything once," was frequently presented as a female protagonist combating injustice—a subject that was well-liked by viewers during the latter years of British rule.