Aishwarya Rai

Aishwarya Rai is among the rare crop of Indian actresses who owns both beauty and brains, qualities that she ably displayed when she took home the Miss World title in 1994, aside from winning other minor awards in the same pageant, including Miss Most Photogenic and Miss Catwalk. Prior to that, she was an architecture student and part-time model whose credits included ad appearances for such products as Prudent, Philips, Casio pagers, and Palmolive. It was her ad for Pepsi, though, that brought Aishwarya instant fame all across India. In 1991, the blue-green-eyed Indian model entered the Ford Supermodel Search and won hands down, even taking the Tulips Miss Super Vivacious title as a bonus. Shortly thereafter, Steven Meisel, the famous photographer, offered her a modeling job, eventually landing her on the covers of Vogue Magazine. The call of Bollywood, the Indian version of Hollywood, eventually came, and Aishwayra soon found herself doing one Indian movie after another for which she received numerous critical acclaim, and for which she has been unofficially crowned as Bollywood queen.