Nai Bonet

Nai Bonet (1945-    ) is a Hollywood B movie actress of Eurasian Vietnamese-French descent who had first gained prominence as a nightclub headliner and belly dancer.

Originally from Saigon, Nai Bonet was born to a Vietnamese mother and a French father.  Her family resettled to the United States while she was a child.  At the age of 13, she became a professional belly dancer appearing nightly in a revue at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.  Throughout the 1960s, Nai Bonet had a successful nightclub act performing at major cabarets across the United States which featured her multi-talents as a singer, comedic actress and of course, belly dancer.  Her popularity at nightclub venues along with her exotic beauty led her to television commercials, numerous appearances on variety shows and small parts portraying a belly dancer in Hollywood films.  In 1966, she recorded a single, Jelly Belly, which was made into a video heavily rotated in Europe's Scopitone jukebox.

In the 1970s, Nai Bonet concentrated more in her acting career.  Among her film credits included Soul Hustler (1973), The Soul of Nigger Charley (1973), The Greatest (1977) and Fairy Tales (1977).  After the critical and commercial failures of her last two movies, Nocturna (1979) and Hoodlums (1980), in which she had starred in as well as produced, Nai Bonet retired from the Hollywood film industry.

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