Indian actress Aishwarya Rai may be 'one of the world's most influential people', but she is little known in the West - yet. Róisín Ingle meets the former Miss World, possible next Bond girl, and star of the upcoming Bollywood movie Bride and Prejudice
The most beautiful woman in the world - according to Julia Roberts - stretches out on the ultra-modern chaise longue in the St Martin's Lane Hotel in London. You may not know her name yet, but 30-year-old Aishwarya Rai is a superstar in her native India, where she is known simply as Ash and revered on almost 20,000 websites, as though she were one of that country's many sacred gods. Her latest film, due out early next month, will introduce her to a whole new audience. Bride and Prejudice is British director Gurinder Chadha's follow-up to Bend It Like Beckham. It's a sumptuous Bollywood adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, and one of a slew of movies that industry insiders say will turn her into the next Penelope Cruz.
Rai's tinkly laughter suggests she is not interested in being the next anything. "I am just interested in being," she says. A former Miss World, crowned in 1994, she is a model turned actress who learned her craft by appearing in dozens of Indian films - both critically acclaimed arthouse movies and commercially successful Bollywood blockbusters - over the past 10 years. At the moment she is spearheading the New Bollywood movement which has seen the Indian film industry sneak ever closer to the mainstream.
Fêted at the Cannes film festival for her appearance in Bollywood spectacular Devdas, the former architecture student will shortly star in Chaos with her favourite actress Meryl Streep, and has been in meetings with Robert de Niro, her favourite actor. She is also tipped as a future Bond girl, and will soon have a waxwork in her likeness in Madame Tussaud's. Named last year by Time Magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people, it shouldn't be long before we all know her name.
Rai is in London to publicise Bride and Prejudice, an all-singing, all-dancing cinematic triumph. Under Chadha's guidance - the director has said she always thought Austen was Indian in another life - the Bennetts of Longbourn become the Bakshis of Amritsar. Mr Bakshi has three daughters and Mrs Bakshi, a meddling mother, is desperate to find them suitable, for which read wealthy, husbands. Darcy is a hotelier from LA visiting India as a tourist. Bingley becomes a second-generation British-born lawyer. Wickham is an English backpacker in search of the "real India", and Mr Collins is Mr Kholi, an obnoxious Indian who has made a fortune in Silicon Valley and has returned to India to find himself a wife.
The first shot in the movie is of Rai as the Elizabeth Bennett figure, Lalita Bakshi, on a tractor at her father's farm. Her beauty is breathtaking. After a special preview screening in Soho, one Indian journalist could be heard grumbling about the fact that the songs are sung in English as opposed to Hindi. (The opening wedding song and dance sequence is a riot of colour and music that stays with the viewer long after the credits have rolled.) But there are no complaints about Rai. "She is astonishing," he says, while a couple of other second-generation Indian female journalists can be heard saying that the film didn't require much acting on Rai's part.
Rai still considers herself a student of her craft, and her hard-working dedication has been remarked on by directors. Anxious that her character didn't look like a fashion model, Rai did a Renée Zellweger and put on a stone and a half for the part which, typically, only enhances her stunning features. She was thrilled to be asked by Chadha to star in the movie. "My reaction to the idea of the movie was that it was very exciting and a lot of fun. It is the perfect love story set-up with an Indian family," says Rai. "Gurinder has made it modern and when you look at it, it is so easy to relate to it, very contemporary and very lovely. It's the normal thing where an Indian mother would be very concerned about getting her daughters married, and when she has so many of them that would really be a primary concern. It was wonderful of Gurinder to come up with such a clever adaptation."
I tell her that when I was in India I noticed her name was never out of the entertainment pages of newspapers, but that when I told people in Ireland I was coming to interview her, nobody knew who she was. "People in India don't necessarily know everyone in Hollywood, so it works the other way around," she says. "Everyone has their own particular industry and sometimes they cross over. It goes with the territory that this film will open me to new audiences, but that wasn't my objective. This is my first English-language film, so while it might mean new fans, I see it mainly as broadening my experience in the cinema. I belong to the cinema now."
The influence of India is everywhere you look these days, I say, in fashion, in music, in film and in spoof chat shows such as The Kumars. There was even a reality TV show on Channel 4 to find a Bollywood star. So why does she think her country is having such an impact in the West?
"You are speaking to someone who is very proud to be Indian. It makes me happy that there is a new curiosity about my culture. It's extremely rich in every aspect and has so much," she says, adding that Bombay, where she grew up, is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. "Even for us, as Indians, it is so diverse it would take a lifetime to discover it totally. Without wanting to sound overly patriotic, we have the world in India in terms of geography, fashion, music, language, cuisine - it is just really diverse, incorporating so many different things that it's wonderful for us to explore it, never mind the rest of the world."
The clean-living actress, who mentions God repeatedly during the interview, and has never been drunk in her life, says she was immensely proud to represent India as Miss World, but doesn't get too hung up by the adulation. "I am very basic, believe me," she says, flashing those incredible olive green eyes that make it very hard indeed to believe her. "All these adages go with the territory, with apparent success at your work there are all the trumpets and the trappings and the compliments. But, God forbid, when people start to think otherwise, it is all over. So you can't take it too seriously."
Just then the sound of a baby crying comes from the depths of her extremely covetable handbag. It's the ringtone of her mobile phone. Does it mean the Bollywood queen is getting broody? Is she ready for a marriage match to be arranged by her own mother, just like in Bride and Prejudice? That tinkly laugh comes again. "I chose the ringtone because I thought it was cute, but when it rings all day, it does start to get a little irritating," she says. "And anyway, with everyone else in the Indian media speculating about when I will marry and who I will marry, my mother hasn't been putting pressure on me. She says, when you will, you will. I don't know if I will have an arranged marriage. I can't see into the future." Somehow it's hard to imagine anyone arranging anything for Aishwarya Rai, except perhaps world domination. But then she is doing that very nicely all by herself.
Bride and Prejudice opens in Ireland on October 8th