She has defined beauty and elegance for more than two decades now and is also one of the most famous Indian celebs abroad. Much like father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is a name to reckon with - both inside the Hindi film industry and outside. Aishwraya turns 44 on Wednesday.
Ash rose to fame after winning Miss World pageant. She has done some memorable roles in films like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Guru, Chokher Bali and Devdas. She was recently seen in Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and is currently working on Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Fanney Khan along side Anil Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao.
➡ To mark her 43rd birthday, we bring her best quotes:-
1. “Please do not spoil me anymore with personal gifts ... all your love truly overwhelms me, love you too!”
2. “Compete with Amitabh Bachchan on acting! Forget it. And Abhishek is my hubby and I, like any Indian wife, can only be proud of his achievements.”
3. “Whenever such a moment comes, you all will get to know. But please don’t speculate till then.”
4. “Women in the industry have been exploited very often, but there are some actors who believe that the short cut to stardom is through nudity.”
5. “No one wants to believe me, that I fell down the stairs. First they call me a woman of substance ... how can they now make me look like such a doormat?” (On Salman beating her)
6. “Life will take its toll on all of us. We get injured, we get old ... Looks are not everything. I am not going to look beautiful all the time.”
7. “I know for a fact that if there’s a role which I am suited for, I’ll be signed on. I’ll never go begging.”
8. “I always believed that my silence on several topics will be an advantage in the long run.”
9. “Sexy in India is not considered positive. But, with today’s crop of fresh faces in the modelling arena, being sexy is an asset.”
10. “I was more excited than scared, at the opportunity to work in an English movie.”
11. “My family is my strength and my weakness.”
12. “She (Mother, Brindya Rai) is the nucleus of my existence; who has gently molded me, shaped me, picked me up when I’ve been down, has faith in me and taught me to be the very best version of me that I can be.”
13. “God has given me plenty of reasons to smile and I feel it’s time to spread it around.”
14. “It’s splendid, it’s inescapable...the bliss is just wonderful. A smile from my daughter and thats it” (Ash on her daughter Aaradhya)
15. “I have openly told David Dhawan that his film (Albela) is like a vacation for me, a paid holiday.”
16. “It’s strange that Rakesh Roshan thinks I look older than Hrithik. In fact, he’s approached me for all his home productions.”
17. “I always knew I would be successful. So there was no element of surprise.”
18. “Many of us are privileged to have opportunities and the confidence in ourselves that assures our safety, but most women in our country do not have that. A lot is being said but a lot more needs to be done about this issue. The day we have definite laws for the wrong doers and immediate punishment to them, that is when things will change.”
19. “A lot of actors have kissed before that movie, they continue to kiss on screen till this very minute, but public display is not that common in Indian culture. Even our actors, it’s very rare that actors look comfortable in our cinema on screen kissing.” Ash on her Dhoom 2 kiss
20. “Yashji is very special to me because he is one of the reasons that I am in the film industry. He is the one who kept talking to me for two years before I joined the industry, to convince me.”
21. “I’ve always said that haters are a drop in the ocean. There’s that much more love. Any kind of negativity in any case just doesn’t stick, it drops off and it doesn’t matter. People have given me so much love throughout my career, my life in the public eye, at every phase. “
22. After I got married, for the next two years, I was congratulated everywhere and felt like a new bride. Same goes true for when I was pregnant. Wherever I went, the amount of love I, Abhishek and Aaradhya have received...it’s a blessing to be in this place. I take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone for their love, good wishes, blessings. That’s the real thing, the rest of it is opinion that varies and it doesn’t matter. This is the reality.”
23. “This is who I am. I am a mother. This can happen and it has happened with me and it’s fine (weight gain). I’ve never been the one who endorse size zero anyway. You guys speculated I was pregnant way before I actually was. It goes to show that I have lived real life in the public eye. That continues.”
24. “When it comes to food, I love my food, I am comfortable with my foods. I have never dieted. Never. I really enjoy food.”
25. “Blogging is the best way to communicate with our well-wishers. It’s just like sharing your happiness, worries and achievements will all our fans who make us ‘stars’. I have seen Pa’s (Amitabh) blog...how people interact with him with so much ease...as if they are just sitting beside him. Both Abhishek and I would love to blog but don’t have enough time to dedicate to it. So for the time being, we will have the media as our communicator.”
26. “I am very, very thankful to Gurinder because that film [Bride and Prejudice] was such a clever piece of work, because there she was adapting an English classic, making it so human and so normal in that very Indian family atmosphere which is so natural to us, and presenting it with what was recognised as very signature Bollywood, bringing the musical aspect - and it was widely appreciated the world over. Wherever I went, people recognised that. I was amazed at the number of people who had given it [an] audience.”
27. “Motherhood is such a glorious blessing and I am very thankful for that. It’s such a beautiful experience. I so strongly recommend it. It’s bliss, love and fulfillment of another level.”
28. “I’d be accused of bias, but worldwide currently Pa [Amitabh Bachchan] is absolutely iconic, he’s celebrated, he’s respected. He definitely is deservedly iconic, and I say this without any bias, and if I am accused of it so be it.”
29. “Strangely nothing makes me feel tired, fatigued at all. I’ve gone days and nights without sleep, and still the mind is in such a positive space it just doesn’t make you feel fatigued.” (Ash on coping with the pressures of motherhood)
30. “I’m often cited as the person who established the beauty pageant-to-films route, but that was not the case with me. I had at least four film offers [before the pageants]. In fact, I decided to participate in Miss India to step back from the film industry for a bit. If I hadn’t taken part in Miss India, Raja Hindustani [1996] would have been my first film.”
31. “‘Aaradhya’ means ‘one who is worthy of worship’. It was a name both Abhishek and I had always considered, but we threw it open to our extended family.”
32. “Working with Salman is out of the question. And you can quote me on that.”
33. “Working with directors like Raj Kumar Santoshi, Rituparno Ghosh and Sanjay Leela Bhansali is an experience beyond belief.”
34. “Any director who’s passionate about his work will be perceived as a tyrant. Whatever the decibel at which a committed director instructs his actors, he wants his point made across. It’s the teacher-pupil relationship. There’re different kinds of teachers in school.” (on working with JP Dutta, the taskmaster)
35. “To know how to dance is one thing. But to get the finer nuances of a mujra, down to its smothered energy and expressions of restrained poignancy, is very difficult.” (On doing a mujra in Umrao Jaan)
36. “I’m not the type who’ll yell about my achievements from the rooftops.”
37. “I just take on what I can commit to completely at that point in time, and that way you’ll be able to give your best.”
38. “In terms of finding that first international recognition of my work, coming back to Cannes is such a milestone in my life because it began actually with ‘Devdas’.”
39. “The larger the audience the better. The more pockets in the world, the more interesting and exciting because it just makes it that much more liberating. This makes it that much more liberating for the various facets of creativity to be explored.”
40. “Elegance is innate...individual...eternal...it stands the test of time!”
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