Imaginary interview with Aishwarya Rai
by Charactorium · Aishwarya Rai (1973 — ?) · Performing Arts · 5 min read
Late afternoon in Juhu, by the sea, in the vast Bachchan apartment where the monsoon drums against the bay windows. She welcomes us without makeup, a shawl thrown over her shoulders, between two shoots. The conversation drifts from the beauty pageant of her twenty-first year to the sumptuous sets of Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
—Do you remember the exact moment the crown was placed on your head in Sun City?
Sun City, November 1994. I was an architecture student, I thought I would design buildings, not walk under spotlights. When they announced India, my legs were no longer my own. I was the fifth from my country to win this title, and I felt, behind the curtain, an entire continent holding its breath. That night I spoke about women's education, about peace — not because I was prompted, but because a crown without a cause already weighed too heavily on my hair. That Miss World crown, I sometimes look at it like a door: it didn't make me beautiful, it simply opened a corridor to Bombay that I would never have dared to walk alone.
A crown without a cause already weighed too heavily on my hair.
—How does one go from an architect's drawing board to a film set?
One doesn't go, one tips over. I had learned to think in plans, in volumes, in light falling on a façade — and I found myself thinking in camera angles. My first advertising campaigns served as my clandestine training: learning to inhabit a frame, not to lie under the lens. Then Mani Ratnam offered me Iruvar in 1997, a demanding double role, in Tamil, a language I had to master syllable by syllable. I understood that day that architecture had not left me: a character is built like a house, foundations first, ornaments later. The only difference is that this time, the house was me.
—What does Devdas, presented at Cannes in 2002, mean to you?
Devdas was a cathedral. Sanjay Leela Bhansali doesn't shoot a film, he erects a set where one gets lost. I wore Kanjeevaram silk saris and Kundan jewellery so heavy that at the end of a take, my shoulders begged for mercy. I was made up before dawn, for several hours, until the face in the mirror became Paro's and not mine. I had to cry, dance, love a man drowning in alcohol — and pretend to sing, because in India the voice comes from elsewhere, from playback singing, from a singer in a studio to whom I lent my lips. Walking up the steps of Cannes with that film was carrying all of Bollywood on a French red carpet.
I was made up until the face in the mirror became Paro's and not mine.
—Do your historical roles, like that of Jodhaa Akbar, require a different kind of work?
Embodiment of a Mughal princess means not betraying the dead. In Jodhaa Akbar, in 2008, Ashutosh Gowariker wanted the truth of an era: the gait, the way of lowering one's eyes before an emperor, the weight of a lehenga choli embroidered with gold threads. I spent weeks learning gestures that no one makes anymore, wearing ornaments that belong to the heritage of Rajasthan. You don't play Jodhaa like you play a musical heroine: there must be restraint, silence, that dignity that no jewel can replace. Every morning on the set in Mumbai, putting on these painstaking costumes, I felt like opening a history book and entering it by stealth.
—In 2002, you were the first Bollywood actress to sit on the Cannes jury. How did that feel?
Loneliness, at first. I was the only one from Bombay, on a jury chaired by David Lynch, surrounded by faces who had grown up with a cinema different from mine. Then I understood that I was not alone at all: I carried with me an industry that the West looked at from afar, like a colorful carnival without taking it seriously. Sitting there was to say that an Indian film could be judged at the same table as a European film. People talk a lot about soft power today, the influence a country exerts without a single cannon — I believe that that night, without speeches, my country scored a point in that gentle battle.
An Indian film could finally be judged at the same table as a European film.
—Since 2006, you have been a global ambassador for L'Oréal Paris. What does such exposure mean?
It means being a face in more than one hundred and fifty countries at once, which is both dizzying and a little frightening. When I signed with L'Oréal Paris, in 2006, it wasn't just a bottle of foundation I was asked to carry — it was the idea that an Indian woman could embody beauty for a brand born in Paris. For a long time, those standards came to us from Europe one-way. Seeing the Indian diaspora, from London to Toronto, recognize themselves in a poster: that is what moves me. I travel constantly, my passport is studded with stamps, and sometimes I wonder if I am an actress or an ambassador for a country that has no ministry for that.
—In 2003, Time named you the most beautiful woman in the world. How does one live with such a label?
One lives with it, like a garment too flashy that you are never allowed to take off. Time, in 2003, wrote that I had transcended Bollywood to become an icon, that my eyes and my poise made me a symbol of Indian beauty and ambition. Oprah Winfrey repeated the phrase before America. People talked about my blue-green eyes like a curiosity at a fair. Yet a face is only a door, not the house. The danger of cultural globalization is that it reduces you to a reproducible image, a poster endlessly replicated. I spent years reminding that behind those eyes, there was a woman who had chosen her roles, her battles, and sometimes her silences.
A face is only a door, not the house.
—Why does the question of beauty seem to you as much a burden as an asset?
Because a beauty crowned at Miss World opens doors, then closes them behind you. The title of 1994 gave me Bollywood, but it also stuck a forehead expectation: remain the most beautiful, eternally, as if time were an insult. In an industry that adores ingénues, returning to the screen with Jazbaa after a break, having aged, embraced motherhood, was almost an act of resistance. I wanted to be judged on what I did with a role, not on the firmness of a contour. Beauty is a capital that depreciates if you attach nothing to it. I have always wanted to attach work to it.
—Your marriage in 2007 to Abhishek Bachchan was followed by millions. How did you experience that attention?
Like a wave whose crest you cannot see. In 2007, marrying Abhishek Bachchan, the son of Amitabh Bachchan, was not just a wedding: it was, in the eyes of India, a dynastic union, two film lineages coming together. The entire diaspora held its breath, newspapers counted the guests as one counts stars. Entering the house in Juhu, that Mumbai neighborhood where so many big-screen families live, meant accepting that my private life would become a national soap opera. I learned to protect spaces of silence, to keep to myself what concerned no one else, because a woman can belong to a saga without dissolving into it.
—Living at the heart of the Bachchan clan, in Juhu, does it change the way you view celebrity?
Profoundly. Juhu is a curious seaside village where the homes of the biggest stars huddle together, where you cross paths with Bollywood history while walking your dog. Living in the Bachchan residence is to inhabit both a living museum and a home. When my daughter Aaradhya was born, in 2011, the announcement went around the world before I could even hold her in peace — and I realized how Indian stardom devours even the intimate. So I fight for the ordinary: a meal of rice and dal, an evening without cameras. Luxury, now, is not the red carpet, it is anonymity stolen for an hour or two.
Luxury, now, is not the red carpet, it is anonymity stolen for an hour or two.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Aishwarya Rai's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.