Aishwarya Rai Bachchan PROFILE
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has truly proved that beauty queens can be successful actresses as well. Even though there have been the likes of Zeenat Aman before, she has touched even greater heights of success than any of her contemporaries, models or otherwise. Despite being declared the world'smost beautiful woman in 1994 after winning the 'Miss World' title, she did not have a spectacular beginning in Hindi films, even though she debuted with Mani Ratnam's Tamil flick, 'Iruvar' (1997) and followed it with a hit in anotherTamil film, 'Jeans' the following year. Aishwarya made her Hindi film debut in 1997 with 'Aur Pyar Ho Gaya,' her Bobby Deol starrer. But Bollywood really sat up and took her seriously after the success of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam' (1999) for which she even won the Filmfare award for 'Best Actress'. She followed it up with films like Subhash Ghai's 'Taal', Mansoor Khan's 'Josh', 'Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai', 'Mohabbatein', but it was Bhansali's 'Devdas' in 2002, which again pushed her to dizzying heights, with the movie also having a special screening at Cannes. With Bengali film director Rituparno Ghosh's 'Chokher Bali', she again proved her prowess as an actress. She had a slight dip in her career when films like 'Dil Ka Rishta', 'Kuch Naa Kaho', Gurinder Chadha's 'Bride and Prejudice', 'Khakee', Ghosh's 'Raincoat', 'Shabd', Paul Mayeda Berges's ''The Mistress Of Spices' failed to sparkle. But she bounced back into the reckoning with 'Dhoom 2' where Hrithik Roshan and she sizzled as a screen couple. They repeated their magic with Ashutosh Gowariker's 'Jodhaa Akbar' in 2008, a film which won her a lot of critical and commercial acclaim along with Mani Ratnam's 'Guru'. Aishwarya married her co-star Abhishek Bachchan in 2007. Aishwarya continued her tryst with international cinema with 'Provoked', 'The Last Legion' and 'Pink Panther 2'. In between there was Ram Gopal Varma's 'Sarkar Raj' along with husband Abhishek and father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan. One of her most touted movies, Ratnam's 'Raavan', where she was cast opposite husband Abhishek Bachchan and Tamil actor Vikram, didn't bring in collections worth crowing about. Aishwarya was definitely banking heavily on this project as was her husband. But the actress moved on and was next seen in Shankar's 'Robot' opposite Rajinikanth and in its very first week, the film slammed all box office records.
The light-eyed beauty was next seen in Vipul Shah's 'Action Replayy', opposite Akshay Kumar. Rai's final release of year 2010 was Sanjay Leela Bhansali 'Guzaarish'. Aishwarya was suppose to be the lead actress of Madhur Bhandarkar's 'Heroine', however she was dropped unceremoniously out of the film post her pregnancy.On November 16, 2011, Aishwarya gave birth to a girl. After much deliberation, it was revealed that she has been named 'Aaradhya'. The baby girl has been under constant media scrutiny for the last couple of years. While the Bachchan family did not allow the media to get hold of Aaradhya's pictures, of late, the little girl has been spotted at various event.
The actress is a recipient of the Padma Shri and has two Filmfare Awards to her credit. There has been constant speculation about Aishwarya's next acting project.