Aishwarya Rai Bacchan is at present one of the most popular actresses of India and piorto her dazzling career in the realm of film was a renowned model. She gained her fame for winning the Miss World contest in the year 2004. She made her film debut in the Tamil film of Mani Ratnam, named Iruvar in 1997 and had her first critical and commercial success with the film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali in the year 1999, with whom she repeated the same success in Devdas , in the year 2002. From that time she has acted in nearly forty Hindi, tamil, Bengali and English films. She is often referred as the most beautiful women in the world, and has also worked on many international projects. The most prominent of which is Bride & Prejudice in the year 2003, and The Last Legion in 2007. she is at present married to the Indian actor Abhishek Bachchan and therefore happens to be the daughter-in-law of the legendary actor Amitabh Bacchan and Jaya Bachchan.
It is to be noted that the film Devdas happened to be a milestone iher career. Not only her performance was lauded besiddes having a major box-office success, it also earned for her the prestigious FilmFare Best Actress Award. In addition, the film also attracted overseas attention as well, receiving a special screening at the internationaly renowned Cannes Film Festival. Again, it was during the same time when she garnered the attention of the West as an Indian actress and went on to appear in a few Hollywood projects. As her name gained popularity in the West, she was chosen by the Time magazine in 2004 as one of the World's "100 Most Influential People" and in 2003, appeared on the cover of the same Time magazine, Asia Edition (TIMEasia). On the other hand, she became the subject of a 60 Minutes profile on te 2nd of January. It was a month later when she appeared on the Late Show with David Litterman. She was also featured on Oprah's "Women Across the Globe" segment. In 2003, she acted in the critically acclaimed and commercial success Bengali film, Chokher Bali, which was an adaptation of one of most famous novels of Rabindranath Tagore, by the same name.
