Uncovered: American porn star Sunny Leone’s amazing journey to Bollywood fame
Leone has come a long way, finding love, acceptance and respect in a conservative society
Like all pearls of supposed wisdom, the contention that there is no such thing as bad publicity contains a grain of truth, and it certainly seems to be the case for Sunny Leone, the hardcore porn star turned mainstream Indian film phenomenon.
Born in Canada to immigrant Sikh parents – her late mother from the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh and her father, who was born in Tibet and brought up in Delhi – Leone, whose real name is Karenjit Kaur Vohraprepares, is a United States citizen right down to the ranch in Nevada she shares as a home with her musician husband, Daniel Weber (who appeared alongside her in adult movies) and adopted two-year-old daughter, Nisha.
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An effective outsider in the world’s second most populous nation when she took the plunge from porn to planet Bollywood, the 36-year-old former Penthouse Pet of the Month was carrying enough cultural baggage to fill the cargo hold of a passenger jet.
This weekend, she is in Hong Kong to perform for the first time on Chinese soil as part of Diwali celebrations among the city’s sizeable Indian community, most of whom will be aware that Leone has pulled off a trick which many in her tradition-bound ancestral homeland considered impossible.
Less than a decade ago, Leone – who spoke to This Week in Asia as she prepared for a typically Bollywood, all-singing, all-dancing, top-of-the-bill appearance at The Amigos Young Millionaires Group, Grand Diwali Ball – was attracting bad publicity by the bucketload.