Persis Khambatta (2 October 1948 – 18 August 1998) was an Indian actress, model and beauty pageant titleholder best remembered for playing Lieutenant Ilia in the feature film Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

Khambatta made her Bollywood début in director K. A. Abbas's Bambai Raat Ki Bahon Mein (1968),[5] playing cabaret singer Lily who croons the film's title track.

She went on to have a brief movie career that included the role for which she is most recognized, the bald Deltan navigator Lieutenant Ilia, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

[citation needed] Co-star Stephen Collins described Khambatta in Star Trek as "a very gentle person, who I think was a little overwhelmed by Hollywood".

Her final appearance in an acting role was that of Chair of the Congress of Nations in the 1993 pilot episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

[8] The ceremony took place at the Polk County Courthouse in Des Moines, Iowa, where Saldanha worked as a representative of the New York Life Insurance Company.

[9] In 1998, she was taken to the Marine Hospital in south Mumbai, complaining of chest pains, and she died of a massive heart attack on 18 August 1998 at the age of 49.