MUMBAI: Beauty, talent, and influence are words that roll right off the tongue when describing Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. After being crowned the Miss World in 1994, Aishwarya has juggled many titles — beauty queen, actor, icon and India’s face in the West. 

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Aishwarya was the OG ambassador of India’s soft power in the West and in her own style, she ensured that India’s image on the global stage remained strong and clear. It is important to note that her efforts in “setting records straight” were way before social media or PR strategies took over.

Aishwarya started her movie career with Mani Ratnam’s 1997 Tamil film Iruvar, four years after winning the crown. She then went on to work in Hindi, Tamil, and other language cinema delivering iconic films such as Devdas, Jodhaa Akhbar, Dhoom 2, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Guru and many more. After a long hiatus, she was seen in Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan films.

While she was carving a space for herself in India, the ‘most beautiful woman in the world’ also had the West’s eyes on her. She played the lead in Gurinder Chaddha’s English film Bride & Prejudice, a Bollywood adaptation of Jane Austen’s famous novel Pride and Prejudice in 2003. She followed it up with The Mistress of Spices, Provoked, The Last Legion and The Pink Panther 2.

The actor, by her own admission, walked away from many projects as well, including Brad Pitt-starrer Troy. Pitt had later spoken about this in an IANS interview in 2012, “Given a chance, I would like to work with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, because she’s a versatile actor. She is one of the most popular actresses of Bollywood, who has achieved huge acclaim in the west for her style, beauty and acting. I think we missed an opportunity to be cast together for Troy.”

The actor’s global presence was not limited to just films. Aishwarya was the first Indian actor to be on the jury of the Cannes International Film Festival and is considered a Cannes veteran now. 

Aishwarya was also seen on some of the most prestigious red carpets in the world and made appearances on American chat shows, which even now gather views on the Internet.

In 2005, Aishwarya appeared on David Letterman’s The Late Show where she schooled the host about Indians living with their parents. 

David asked Aishwarya, “Do you live with you parents, is that true? And, is it common in India for children to live with their parents?” To this Aishwarya replied, “It is fine to live with your parents because it is also common in India that we don’t have to make appointments with our parents for dinner.” The actor’s response received thunderous applause from the audience.

David Letterman really tried to make fun of Aishwarya Rai for living with her parents... pic.twitter.com/h5FY9P1bfH

— Sameera Khan (@SameeraKhan) March 24, 2021

The same year, Aishwarya became the first Indian actress to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She later appeared on the show with husband Abhishek Bachchan. 

One of the most famous segments of her first appearance was Oprah asking about the arranged marriage set-up in India, something Americans find amusing.

“Arranged marriages in urban India would be like a global dating service where the families study each other’s backgrounds, and they bring a couple together, and they get engaged and they date and if it works they get along with the alliance, and if it doesn’t work they fall out,” Aishwarya explained with utmost grace.

During the course of her career, Aishwarya did not stop talking about the growth India was making and how it was unfair for the world to build misconceptions about her country.

During a 2012 interview with journalist David Frost for Al Jazeera, she said, “It shocked me how ill-informed so many parts of the world were about current India. And I’m so blessed that I had the opportunity to dispel some very, from my perspective, unbelievable misconceptions about us as a country.” 

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Asked for an example, she continued, “Basic things, like the fact that I spoke English comfortably, to begin with. They’d be like, ‘Are you educated in India? You speak English well’. And I’m like, ‘Well, we do learn English in India’. This is really simple.”

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Credits - The Indian Express