Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Background

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is an Indian actress who rose to prominence in Bollywood. She was born in Mangalore, India. Her father, Krishnaraj, was an Army scientist who died on March 18, 2017, and her mother, Vrinda, is a homemaker. She has an older brother, Aditya Rai, who works as a merchant navy engineer. Bachchan’s brother co-produced and co-wrote the film “Dil Ka Rishta” with their mother. She attended Arya Vidya Mandir High School in Mumbai, where her family had relocated. She completed her intermediate education at Jai Hind College for a year before enrolling at D.G. Ruparel College in Matunga, where she received a 90% in the H.S.C. exams. She spent five years of her adolescence studying classical dance and music. Her favorite subject was zoology.

Bachchan was studying architecture at the time she was elected Miss World in 1994. The title catapulted her into the modeling industry’s fast lane. She received lucrative positions with PepsiCo, Inc. and “Vogue” magazine, as well as a spokesmodel contract with L’Oréal Paris in 2003. Her acting career got off to a good start with praised roles in “Iruvar” (1997) and “Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya” (1997). Both films defied the basic structure that characterized Bollywood films at the time, propelling Bachchan to the forefront of the ‘New Bollywood.’ With her heartbreaking portrayal as the jilted lover Paro in “Devdas” (2002), one of the most popular Bollywood films and the first to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, Bachchan cemented herself as the new ‘Queen of Bollywood.’ Following that, she received great acclaim for her portrayal in “Chokher Bali” (2003), a tense drama based on Rabindranath Tagore’s novel. In the same year, she became the first Indian actress to serve on the Cannes Film Festival jury. Bachchan appeared in Gurinder Chadha’s “Bride and Prejudice,” a musical and dance adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” That was when Bachchan brought her star power and beauty to her first major English-language film. She returned to Bollywood for the smash “Dhoom: 2” (2006) before releasing “Provoked: A True Story” (2006) in English. In April 2007, she married Abhishek Bachchan, a frequent co-star and the son of Bollywood great Amitabh Bachchan, in a marriage that brought together two of India’s most powerful personalities.

Bachchan made a comeback in the Arthurian legend “The Last Legion” (2007). It was a box office flop, but it was quickly eclipsed by the critical and popular triumph of “Jodhaa Akbar” (2008). “The Pink Panther 2” (2009) and the action-romance “Enthiran” were two of Bachchan’s next films. She then took a break from performing after the birth of her baby in 2011. “Jazbaa,” a crime thriller where she played a criminal attorney whose daughter was kidnapped, was her comeback in 2015. The next year, she acted in “Sarbjit,” a biography about an Indian man imprisoned in Pakistan on terrorist and espionage allegations.