Aishwarya Rai World Apsara

Aishwarya Rai is rumored to have lost her Miss India crown in 1994 to Sushmita Sen due to a trip on the ramp during the show. As a runner up, she ended up going to the Miss World competition, and that year, India ruled the beauty scene with Sushmita willing the Miss Universe title and Aish, as she's popularly known, winning the Miss World. As was expected, both tried their hands at acting. Aish is clearly the more successful of the two.

While she got her big break in the south first, she soon came to Bollywood with a movie with Bobby Deol whose story was neatly lifted from the Robert Downey Jr romance Only You. Here's the song Thoda Sa Pagla from that movie and you can see shades of Madhuri's Choli Ke Peechhe dance moves in there.




Her western looks didn't work very well in the Hindi cinema world and eventually it fell upon the showman Subhash Ghai to make her a bit hit with Taal. Here's a beautiful song Ishq Bina with Aishwarya and Akshaye Khanna.



Here's another song from the same movie - Taal Se Taal Mila.




Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam in the same year - 1999 - finally got her the well deserved place in Bollywood and started her down the path of becoming the recipient of the crown from Madhuri Dixit. Here's the popular song Nimbooda from that movie.


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Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam also showed the terrific chemistry between Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai as can be seen in the popular number Dholi Taro below.



She's probably best known for the role of Paro in the umpteenth remake of Devdas. This movie also brought Madhuri back after her marriage and gave her one of her biggest hits. Here's a hit song Dola Re Dola from that movie.



Item numbers are an easy way of making a ton of money for the pretty actresses. Karishma Kapoor is rumored to have been miffed by the fact that Aish's item number - Ishq Kamina - in Shakti upstaged her role as the heroine in the movie in 2002.



Her romance with Salman broke rather violently and among other things, that also broke things between Shah Rukh and her who tried to patch them up. She found solace in the arms of Vivek Oberoi and the couple had decent chemistry in their movie - Kyun Ho Gaya Na in 2004. Here's a song Aao Naa from the movie.




It didn't go anywhere, but that's where she got close to the mighty Bachchan khandan. She almost managed to upstage Rani Mukherjee with her item number in Bunty Aur Babli where she danced seductively with both the father and the son together in the superhit song Kajra Re in 2005.