Aishwarya Rai

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan(née Aishwarya Rai, Tulu: ಐಶ್ವರ್ಯಾ ರೈ, pronounced [əjɕʋərjaː rəj]; born 1 November 1973) is an Indian actress and former Miss World. Before starting her acting career, she worked as a model and gained fame after winning the Miss World title in 1994. During her career, Rai has acted in over 40 movies in Hindi, English, Tamil and Bengali, which include a number of international productions.

Often cited by the media as the most beautiful woman in the world,^[2][3][4] Rai made her movie debut in Mani Ratnam's Tamil film Iruvar (1997) and had her first commercial success in the Tamil movie Jeans (1998). She came to the attention of Bollywood in the movie Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Her performance in the film won her the Filmfare Best Actress Award. In 2002 she appeared in Bhansali's next project, Devdas (2002), for which she won her second Filmfare Best Actress Award.

After a low phase in her career during 2003–2005, she appeared in the blockbuster Dhoom 2 (2006), which turned out to be her biggest Bollywood commercial success. She later appeared in films like Guru (2007), Jodhaa Akbar (2008), and Enthiran (2010) which were commercially and critically successful. Rai has thus established herself as one of the leading contemporary actresses in the Indian film industry. In 2009, she was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Early life

Rai was born in Mangalore to Krishnaraj Rai and Vrinda Rai. She has one elder brother, Aditya Rai, who is an engineer in the merchant navy and has also co-produced one of Rai's movies, Dil Ka Rishta (2003). At an early age her parents moved to Mumbai where she attended the Arya Vidya Mandir high school in Santa Cruz. Rai then entered Jai Hind College at Churchgate for one year, and then moved to Ruparel College in Matunga to finish her HSC studies. She planned to become an architect, and started studying architecture, but gave up her education to pursue a career in modelling.^[5]

She can communicate in several languages, including her mother tongue Tulu, as well as Hindi, English, Marathi and Tamil.