Parveen Babi

1954–2005

Parveen Babi was the first Hindi film actress to appear on the cover of Time, in 1976, and she arrived as something the industry had not had: a leading woman played as modern, urban and unapologetic rather than as a compromise with tradition. She made more than fifty films in a decade.

Deewaar's Anita is the part that set that image. Her later life was difficult and publicly so - she left the industry in the mid-1980s, returned briefly, and withdrew entirely. She died alone in Mumbai in 2005, and is remembered now as much for how the press treated her as for the work.