Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (born Aishwarya Rai, and sometimes known simply as Ash or Aish, Tulu (Tulu language): 1 November 1973) is an Indian actress and former Miss World. Before starting her acting career, she worked as a model (Model (person)) and gained fame after winning the Miss World title in 1994.

Often cited by the media as the most beautiful woman in the world, Rai made her movie debut in Mani Ratnams Tamil film Iruvar (1997) and had her first commercial success in the Tamil movie Jeans (Jeans (film)) (1998). She came to the attention of Bollywood in the movie Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Her performance in the film won her the Filmfare Best Actress Award. In 2002 she appeared in Bhansalis next project, Devdas (Devdas (2002 film)) (2002), for which she won her second Best Actress Award at the Filmfare. After a low phase in her career during 2003-2005, she appeared in the blockbuster Dhoom 2 (2006), which turned out to be her biggest Bollywood commercial success. She later appeared in films like Guru (Guru (2007 film)) (2007) and Jodhaa Akbar (2008), which were commercially successful and got her critical acclaim. Rai has thus established herself as one of the leading contemporary actresses in the Indian film industry.

During her career, Rai has acted in over forty movies in Hindi (Hindi language), English (English language), Tamil (Tamil language) and Bengali (Bengali language) including the international productions Bride & Prejudice (2004), The Mistress of Spices (The Mistress of Spices (film)) (2005), The Last Legion (2007) and The Pink Panther 2 (2009) in English.