Aishwarya Rai Bachchan ( born 1 November 1973) is an Indian actress and former Miss world. Before starting her acting career, she worked as a model and gained fame after winning the Miss World title in 1994. During her career, Rai has acted in over 40 movies in Hindi, English, Tamil and Bengali, which include a number of international productions.
Often cited by the media as the most beautiful woman in the world, Rai made her movie debut in Mani Ratnam's Tamil film Iruvar (1997) and had her first commercial success in the Tamil movie jeans (1998). She came to the attention of Bollywoodin the movie Hum dil de chukay sanam (1999). Her performance in the film won her the Film fare best actress awards. In 2002 she appeared in Bhansali's next project, Devdas (2002), for which she won her second Film fare best actress awards .
After a low phase in her career during 2003–2005, she appeared in the blockbuster Dhoom2 (2006), which turned out to be her biggest Bollywood commercial success. She later appeared in films like Guru (2007), Jodhaa Akbar (2008), and Enthiran (2010) which were commercially and critically successful. Rai has thus established herself as one of the leading contemporary actresses in the Indian film industry. In 2009, she was honoured with the padma shri by the Government of india.