Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is an Indian actress renowned for her work in Hindi and Tamil films. The winner of the Miss World 1994 pageant, she has established herself as one of the most popular celebrities in India.
Rai was born on 1 November 1973 into a Tulu-speaking Bunt family in Mangalore, Karnataka. Her late father, Krishna was an Army biologist, while her mother, Vrinda, is a housewife. She has one elder brother, Aditya Rai, who is an engineer in the merchant navy.
She has received numerous accolades, including two Filmfare Awards, and was honored with the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2009 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France in 2012. She has often been cited in the media as “the most beautiful woman in the world”
Rai’s movie Dil Ka Rishta (2003) was co-produced by her brother and co-written by her mother. The family moved to Mumbai, where Rai attended the Arya Vidya Mandir High School. Rai did her intermediate schooling at Jai Hind College for a year, and then joined DG Ruparel College in Matunga, securing 90 percent in the HSC exams.
She trained in classical dance and music for five years during her teens. Her favorite subject was zoology, and she initially considered a career in medicine. Then, with plans to become an architect, she enrolled at Rachana Sansad Academy of Architecture but later gave up her education to pursue a career in modeling.
Rai married actor Abhishek Bachchan in 2007; the couple has one daughter. Her off-screen roles include duties as a brand ambassador for several charity organizations and campaigns. She is a Goodwill Ambassador for the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS). In 2003, she was the first Indian actress to be a jury member at the Cannes Film Festival.
She made her acting debut in Mani Ratnam’s 1997 Tamil film Iruvar and had her first Hindi film release in Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya that same year. Her first commercial success was the Tamil romantic drama Jeans (1998), which was the most expensive Indian film at the time. She achieved wider success and won two Filmfare Awards for Best Actress for her performances in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s romantic dramas Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) and Devdas (2002).
Rai garnered critical appreciation for portraying a passionate artist in the Tamil romance film Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), Tagore’s heroine, Binodini, in the Bengali film Chokher Bali (2003), a depressed woman in the drama Raincoat (2004), Kiranjit Ahluwalia in the British drama film Provoked (2006), and a nurse in Bhansali’s drama Guzaarish (2010). Rai’s greatest commercial successes have been the romantic drama Mohabbatein (2000), the adventure film Dhoom 2 (2006), the drama Guru (2007), the period film Jodhaa Akbar (2008), the science fiction film Enthiran (2010), the romantic drama Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016), and the period film Ponniyin Selvan: I (2022).
