How Aishwarya Rai Bachchan went from blue-eyed schoolgirl beauty to Miss World, to film superstar and one half of a Bollywood power couple with husband Abhishek Bachchan
The Devdas and Dhoom 2 star seemed destined for fame from a young age, and then her appearance in a 90s Pepsi advert changed everything
The accomplishments and beauty of celebrated actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are well-documented – hundreds of fan sites, social media accounts and hyperbolic odes to everything from her outfits to her beauty regimen can be found online. She’s been taking a break of late, however, and it’s unlikely she will return to our screens before 2022, when she is set to star in the Tamil historical epic Ponniyin Selvan (Son of Ponni). As she turns 47 this week, we take a look at the origin story of Indian cinema’s definitive leading lady.
The youngest child of Vrinda (a homemaker) and Krishnaraj Rai (a biologist in the Indian army), Aishwarya also has one older brother, Aditya, who is in the merchant navy, in her small nuclear family. The Rais were far removed from the glitz and glamour of Bollywood. In fact, their roots are in South India, in Mangalore in the state of Karnataka. She has been trilingual from childhood; proficient in English, Hindi and her mother-tongue, Tulu. Soon after she was born, in the late 1970s, her then merchant navy officer father was transferred to Mumbai.
As a result, both children studied in Mumbai. According to friends and family who knew her then, Aishwarya was a good student and showed a natural proclivity for classical Indian dance, whether traditional Bharatnatyam, Koli folk dance, or anything else for that matter.
In past interviews, she’s spoken at length about the importance of education, telling The Times of India, “I used to consistently be the first ranker in my class. Only once, when I was in the seventh standard, I stood third in my exams. This hit me really badly. I realised how important it was for me to be a topper and studied very hard for the final term and once again I stood first in all the divisions of my standard.”
She attended Arya Vidya Mandir High School, did her intermediate schooling at Jai Hind College for a year, and finally attended DG Ruparel College in Matunga, landing herself in the top percentile after exam results were released. Unusually blue-eyed, it seems the legend of her good looks went before her, even in school. Contemporaries and professors recalled later that people would line up outside the college gates to catch a glimpse of the famously beautiful girl – perhaps it’s why she can take the adulation in her stride these days.
One of the women teaching photography at her college encouraged the teen to take a turn in front of the camera, and sure enough – long before social media and Instagram came into the frame – the pictures went viral. Her photos caught the eye of advertising filmmakers and notable Indian photographers Gautam Rajadhyaksha and Farrokh Chothia, who soon catapulted her from pretty girl-next-door to a face that launched a thousand campaigns.