Happy Birthday Aishwarya Rai Bachchan: A Glance At Her Collaborations With Maniratnam

It's not easy to look at Aishwarya Rai's eyes and casually look away. Her eyes have this magical quality to them and they hold your line of sight if they wish to, effortlessly. Her recent outing in Manratnam's Ponniyin Selvan 1 showed that the lady has not lost even an ounce of her charm.

On her birthday, November 1, let's go on a journey through the collaborations of Maniratnam and Aishwarya Rai. All the characters she has played for Maniratnam's films have been inspired by either real or fictional characters that have managed to find their way to the general public prior to her donning the role, and she managed to exceed expectations every time.

Iruvar

Iruvar, which was released in 1997, marked Aishwarya's acting debut. The film was inspired by real political prodigies of the time, and Aishwarya Rai played a character roughly based on J Jayalalithaa, the late former chief minister of Tamilnadu. The character was received well and she went on to do many more films and became the celebrated actress that she is now.

Guru

Aishwarya played Sujata Desai, a character based on Kokila Dhirubhai Ambani, in Guru. She falls in love with Guru Bhai, and gets married to him. She stays by his side and supports him through his strenuous journey of building an empire by himself from the scratch. She had paired with her husband Abhishek Bachchan in the film. The couple got married a few months after the release of the film.

Raavanan

This time Aishwarya Rai wasn't depicting a real character for Maniratnam, but the female lead from the mythological epic Ramayana. Playing a character loosely based Sita was a cake walk for the calm and expressive Aishwarya. The role was performed with the artistic nuances one can always find in a Maniratnam film.

Ponniyin Selvan 1

The recently released Ponniyin Selvan 1 had Aishwarya play Nandhini, a character from the Tamil historical fiction novel, Ponniyin Selvan. The character is a grey personality and is one of the antagonists of the story. However, one can never judge how far she would go and where she would let her conscience stop her, and Aishwarya had played it to perfection.

We are all eagerly waiting to see her performance in the sequel of the film where the plot is going to take turns that would send heart rates up to the sky.

Happiest of birthdays to one of the most attractive people to have ever set foot on earth!