A former Miss World, she is probably the most well-known Indian actress in the West. She is said to be India's first cross-over actress getting offers from Hollywood. In a count in 2006, there were found to be over 17,000 websites dedicated to her. She is the first Indian actress to be on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival. She is the first Indian actress to have her own wax statue at Madam Tussauds. She is the only Indian actress to have appeared on The David Letterman Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show. She was voted the most attractive woman of 2003 in a poll conducted by Hello Magazine beating out Catherine Zeta-Jones, Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman. Julia Roberts has called the most beautiful woman on this planet. She is...Aishwarya Rai.

Aishwarya was born on November 1, 1973 in Mangalore, Karnataka in South India. While still a child, her parents moved to Mumbai. There, she attended Arya Vidya Mandir School before going on to Jai Hind College and then Ruparel College. Aiming to be an Architect, even as she began her studies in Architecture, she began modelling on the side. She made an instant mark in her first major commercial for Pepsi co-starring with Aamir Khan as the stunning Sanjana. Co-indentally, both would switch to modelling for Coca Cola in later years! Aishwarya soon became a top model due to her stunning looks and was the firm favourite to win the Femina Miss India Contest of 1994. However, she narrowly lost the crown to Sushmita Sen, who went on to become Miss Universe as well. But Aishwarya showed that she too had it in her to be a winner and won the Miss World crown later that year. Having given up her studies, Aishwarya reigned over the modelling world and made the next logical choice as far as her career was concerned - films.

But, instead of making a conventional debut in Hindi cinema, Aishwarya chose to be launched in a Tamil film. And it was no ordinary Tamil film. It was a Mani Rathnam film with Mohanlal as her co-star, Iruvar (1997), loosely based on friends-turned-foes MG Ramachandran and M Karunanidhi. Though not knowing a word of Tamil, Aishwarya acquitted herself quite well under Mani Rathnam's assured direction in the double role of Mohanlal's first wife and then subsequently a starlet, based of course on Jayalalitha. What's more, she managed to stand up to Mohanlal in their scenes together and needless to say, she looked stunning in the film in both avatars.

Her Hindi film debut Aur Pyar Ho Gaya (1997) opposite Bobby Deol, however, was disastrous, as was the film. What's more Aishwarya came across as extremely stilted in her performance. Though beautiful, there was a coldness and fakeness to her performance, something which continues to plague her in a lot of films since. But fortunately for Aishwarya, her follow-up film Jeans (1998), a Tamil film with director S Shankar, gave her big commercial success down South.

Aishwarya made a major impact as an actress with Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999). The film, a love triangle with her as the centre between Salman Khan and Ajay Devgan, sees arguably her best ever performance. As the headstrong woman, who loves Salman Khan but is forced to marry Ajay Devgan before gradually being won over by him even as he tries to get her to Salman, Aishwarya manages to handle all the shades of her role extremely competently. In fact, she went on to win the Filmfare Award for Best Actress for the film. The film also led to a romance between Salman Khan and her. That year Aishwarya also had a huge success with Taal (1999), directed by Subhash Ghai and co-starring Anil Kapoor and Akshaye Khanna. The film, again a love triangle with her at the centre and though not one of Ghai's best film is lifted several notches by AR Rahman's scintillating musical score.

Aishwarya's career has been strange post Taal. Rather than progress as a pefrormer, she has been largely disappointing in most of her films. There are but a few films where she made an impact on the film with her acting. One such film was Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), a fine adaptation of Sense and Sensibilty in Tamil where Aishwarya gave a fine performance even though pitted against artists like Mammooty, Tabu, Ajith and Abbas. Other films where Aishwarya made an impact histrionically are perhaps just Josh (2000), Devdas (2002), re-uniting her with Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Choker Bali (2003) and Raincoat (2004), both directed by Rituparno Ghosh, Mani Rathnam's Guru (2007) and Provoked (2007). But even here, the films are nowhere the filmmakers' best films and in Choker Bali, good as Aishwarya is, her thunder is stolen by a delightful performance by Raima Sen. The film, based on a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, remains one of Aishwarya's favourite films, though. Speaking about her role, Aishwarya had commented, "The character of Binodini is a challenging proposition. She is a blend of contradictions. She is a widow and feels attracted to Mahendra who brings home a young bride, Ashalata. Behari is attracted to Binodini. Binodini vacillates between both though Mahendra pulls her more. Yet, she does not give up her widow’s weeds. She cannot bear the thought of losing Mahendra to a silly and naive rival like Ashalata. A complex range of emotions starts playing within her. She tries to seduce Mahendra, as if that is the biggest challenge in her life.”

Aishwarya went on to win her second Filmfare Award For Best Actress for Devdas where she played Paro to Shah Rukh's Devdas and Madhuri Dixit's Chandramukhi. In fact, all three leads picked up the Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress Awards, repectively. The film, however, is loud, garish and overblown with severe pretensions to grandeur and to put it simply, quite unwatchable. The film was screened at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2002 and opened the Western World's eyes towards Aishwarya. They were captivated by her stunning looks and it was but a matter of time before Aishwarya would do her first International film.

The film in question, Bride and Prejudice (2004), proved disastrous for Aishwarya. On paper it had everything going for her. She was the central character in the film having a cast of fine actors such as Martin Henderson, Naveen Andrews, Indira Varma, Anupam Kher and Marsha Mason. The director was Gurinder Chada who had just captured the imagination of the world with her delightful Bend it Like Beckham (2002) and the film was to be an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice set in a typical Punjabi family. It couldn't go wrong. It did... While it sounds wonderful to transpose Jane Austen to Bollywood, what lets the film down are the Bollywood elements themselves. Maybe because you feel Chadha doesn't take these elements seriously enough. Thus you are unsure at times if the film is actually her tribute to Bollywood or is it a kind of parody where she enjoys its quirks. In fact lets be fair - Bollywood takes itself very seriously and does these sorts of films better. The West might dismiss our films as 'those Indian musicals' but here given a chance to go better, even the musical part of the film is a big no no. And Aishwarya, herself, at no time ever comes across as the vibrant, passionate, headstrong intelligent woman she is supposed to be. But to be fair here the writing doesn't help her either. Her scenes of confrontation with Martin Henderson lack drama or intelligence or good dialogue. All we have to show that this is an intelligent woman is some naïve pro India dialogues against the gora who doesn't understand the real India. On top of that, she is extremely stilted and her English accent too is strange to say the least.

To be honest, Aishwarya acquited herself much better in her follow up International films, Mistress of Spices (2005) and Provoked (2007). Sadly, Mistress of Spices proved to be a woeful film while Provoked too had its share of problems even though it had it all - a brilliant subject that needed to be highlighted and a real life storybase about how one woman's bravery helped fuel a nationwide crusade and irrevocably altered British laws on domestic violence. However, what should have been a hard-hitting eye opener merely ends up as a well-intentioned film and nothing more. No compalints on Aishwarya though. The film finally silences those who scoffed at her acting abilities. For once the actress is in fine form, playing a real character in a real manner even if she looks nothing like a Punjabi or like the real Kiranjit for that matter. Managing a reasonable Punjabi dicton, making splendid use of her eyes and showing an ability to express herself through silence, she captures both the moods of fleeting moments of happiness and the horrific domestic violence she is subjected to equally well. Whether it is the elation of meeting her children in jail or taking on the jail bully or her bonding with Miranda Richardson, she more than holds her own. The Last Legion (2007), her truly big International film with actors Colin Firth and Sir Ben Kingsley, too failed to mke any critical or commercial impact the world over.

Aishwarya finally sizzled on screen in the cracking chartbuster Kajre Re from Bunty aur Babli (2005). All thoughts of her being cold, plastic and unsexy went flying out of the window as the nation danced to the song. To put it simply, she looked hotter than ever, the sexiest she's ever looked, making the song the item number to beat all item numbers. Dhoom 2 (2006) too saw Aishwarya trying out a sexy avatar as she was styled in short and sexy dresses and she even did a kissing scene with Hrithik but franky she failed to make the impact she should have. For one, her performance in the film left a lot to be desired and secondly, in any case, Hrithik ate up the rest of the cast in the film making the film truly his own.

Following the critical and commercial failure of Umrao Jaan (2006), Aishwarya acquited herself quite well in Guru (2007), a film that reunited her with Mani Rathnam. Though essentially a supporting role as the woman behind Abhishek, she nevertheless manages to leave her mark on the film and holds her own in each of her scenes in the film.

2008 was a mixed year for Aishwarya. Jodhaa Akbar (2008), where she played Rajput Princess Jodhaa to Hrithik's Emperor Akbar, was a high but Sarkar Raj was not. 2009 has not been good so far with the Hollywood biggie Pink Panther 2 co-starring Steve Martin, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina and Andy Garcia receiving poor reviews, epecially Ash herself.

Linked earlier to Salman Khan in what was a extremely volatile relationship and then Vivek Oberoi, Asihwarya finally tied the knot with Abhishek Bachchan, her co-star of Dhai Akshar Prem ke (2000), Kuch Naa Kaho (2003), Umrao Jaan, Guru and Sarkar Raj.

The latest feather in Aishwarya's cap is the Padmi Shri for her contribution to Indian cinema.