Birthday: Nov 1, 1973

Birthplace: Mangalore, in the South Indian state of Karnataka

Biography: Her first films, in both Tamil and Hindi, were only moderately successful. Her first major success was in the 1999 film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. The following year, she appeared in the extremely successful Mohabbatein. In 2002, Rai appeared with Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan and Madhuri Dixit in the lavishly produced Devdas, which was a major box-office success. The film attracted overseas attention as well, receiving a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival and garnering international at... ... (read more...) tention for Rai. In the past, Indian actors and actresses were celebrities in South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, but unknown to the rest of the world. Rai was one of the first Indian actresses to become a Western celebrity. In 2003, Rai was a member of the jury at Cannes. In 2004, she was chosen by TIME Magazine's Asian Edition as one of Asia's "100 Most Influential People." She was the subject of a 60 Minutes profile on January 2, 2005 - "The Most Beautiful face in the World." A month later she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, and on April 25, 2005, she was featured on Oprah's "Women Across the Globe" segment. A wax figure of Rai is on display in London's Madame Tussaud's wax museum. Although frequently the subject of gossip column speculation about an imminent Hollywood career, it was only in 2004 that Rai finally acted in a foreign film, when British director Gurinder Chadha hired her to play the heroine in Bride and Prejudice, a Hollywood-funded but Bollywood-ized version of Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice. The movie came just shy of breaking even at the US box office but earned over 400% return on investment in global revenue. Her next overseas venture, Mistress of Spices, written by Gurinder Chadha and her husband Paul Mayeda Berges, from the novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and directed by Berges, was released in the U.K. in April 2006 to a milder critical and commercial reception but rave reviews in Middle East and Asia. Aishwarya has several other international, English-language films in the pipeline, including Provoked, and The Last Legion.