TIME
MAGAZINE'S "TOP 100
MOST
INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD TODAY"
Artists & Entertainers from 1900-1999
Issue
April 19-26, 2004
By
ALEX PERRY
RUSSEL WONG
PHOTOGRAPHER FOR TIME
Aishwarya Rai gets the sort of web adulation that even
Britney Spears might envy. The 17,000 sites in her honor
include poetry sites, a "Hindu shrine" site,
even a site dedicated to her eyes (which she wants to
leave to science when she dies). "She deserves to be
pampered with roses, smothered with caresses; iridescent
as the moon, she is life, body, soul and, yes,
heart," reads one paean from a fan. For billions
more, from Kabul to Kuala Lumpur, "Ash" is the
most recognized female face in Bollywood, as the Indian
film industry (the world's largest) is widely known. Now
she is about to make a breakthrough in the West. This
spring the 30-year-old former Miss World will return to
Cannes as the new face of L'Oréal and then tour Britain,
the U.S. and Canada in a Bollywood road show. A string of
Western film roles will follow Coline Serreau's Chaos,
in which she plays a prostitute who is rescued by a
housewife, played by Meryl Streep; and Bride and
Prejudice, director Gurinder Chadha's follow-up to her
2002 hit Bend It Like Beckham. None of that means
Rai has given up Bollywood. She's starring in four Indian
films to be released this year and has signed for five
more.
Rai finds her arrival in Hollywood a little hard to
believe. "For a long time I was skeptical," she
says. "But now I'm realizing it might be for
real." Her hope, she says, is to lead an Indian
invasion, to "catalyze" Bollywood's crossover to
the West and "open the doors for everybody
else." But with aspiration comes fear too. "I'm
stepping out of my comfort zone," she says,
"leaving all that adulation to be a newcomer
again." Somehow, we suspect, the adulation will
follow her.
