Kollywood to Hollywood

Ais, originally uploaded by Jeevan_.

Story of Aishwarya Rai

Aishwarya Rai was born on 1st Nov 1973 in Mangalore, Karnataka, India. She was younger of the two siblings, her brother being 3 yrs elder. When she was about 4 years old her family moved to Bombay permanently.

The celestial beauty Aishwarya, won Miss World Title at Sun City in 1994 and has since then become the hottest property of Bollywood. Her stupendous success as Miss World was followed by an equally matchless accomplishments in the film world. Aishwarya, who came into Bollywood by default, as she was flooded with offers after being crowned in Sun City, has now become the undisputed monarch of the tinsel territory. Buoyed by her success she is now looking westwards. Soon she will be appearing in ‘Bride and Prejudice’ a re-working of the Jane Austin classic opposite actor Martin Henderson (The Ring), directed by Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham). How this movie fares at the box office remains to be seen but it has definitely given a fillip to her career as she has got many offers from the Hollywood.

She did her matriculation from Arya Vidya Mandir and later joined Jai Hind College. She did her twelfth standard from Ruparel College.
Aishwarya had initially wanted to become an architect. She was into studying contours of buildings at the Rachna College, when destiny willed otherwise and she landed in South Africa, for the Miss World contest where the contours of body mattered more.
After her crowning as the most beautiful woman on the planet, she has soared height after height. Films came as a natural choice for this model turned actress and she has done over a score of Hindi Films till date quite a number of them being blockbusters.
The most famous one being Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s musical melodrama Devdas.
Devdas became the first Hindi Commercial Film to be screened at Cannes Film festival. This year incidentally she earned the distinction of being the first Indian Actress on the jury of the same festival.

In 2003 Aishwarya became the first Indian actor to be a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Ash is also the latest member of the elite L'Oreal Dream Team, joining beauties Catherine Deneuve & Andie MacDowell as their international ambassador. She graced the covers of India Today and the prestigious TIME Magazine. Ash was listed on Rolling Stone Magazine's annual "Hot List".

Her first film was Mani Ratnam’s Iruvar (Tamil), in which she played a rather diminutive role but she could captivate the audience by her dance performance and in depth acting. With duds like ‘Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya’ and ‘Jeans’ (Tamil), when everybody had almost written her off till she bounced back with a stunning performance in ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’. ‘Taal’ set her on equal footing with the reigning Goddess Madhuri Dixit.

Beautiful blue eyes to an Eye Bank and endorsing it on national television, Ash was once again showered by publicity for her philanthropic gesture. Since her entrance into the Indian film industry in 1995, she has been signed by best directors, in films with lavish budgets, opposite leading stars and is today the superstar of the Indian film industry. Aishwarya Rai - an original, is treading very well in her transition from beauty queen to screen queen while moving into further limelight.

For 2004, Ash is set to star in "Chaos" opposite Meryl Streep for French Director Coline Serreau, "Singularity" opposite Brendan Fraser for director Roland Joffe and "I Know a Place" for Director/Writer Barton Randall and will end the year with "Mistress of Spices" once again with Director Gurinder Chadha.

Recently Aishwarya Rai has been invited to kick-start a campaign of immunization against polio in Pakistan. He is the first Indian Actress to kick-start a campaign in Pakistan. Best of Luck Ash.