Aishwarya Rai Bachchan: A Star Who Never Was, A Diva Frozen In Time

When Aishwarya Rai Bachchan stepped out on the Cannes red carpet in 2025, she became a cultural ambassador in one fell swoop. With the dash of red sindoor in her hair, Bollywood gossip circles came alive. The singular gesture came to mean many things at once—it was taken as a nod to India’s “Operation Sindoor”, while seemingly silencing divorce rumours in her private life.

Since 2002, Rai Bachchan and Cannes have been inseparable. She burst onto the global scene at the festival’s gala premiere of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas, which turns 23 this July. Swirling her sunflower-yellow Neeta Lulla sari, she immediately captured media attention while pulling up in a horse-drawn chariot. The very next year, she was back, serving on the main competition jury presided over by Patrice Chéreau. It was the first occasion an Indian actor was selected for the jury. Since then, there have been several, ranging from Sharmila Tagore to Deepika Padukone. Her selection raised many eyebrows for—barring few odd films like Devdas—the actress was usually dismissed for her mannered performances. Neither had she built a solid resume. So, what is it about the green-eyed charmer from India that commanded attention enough to earn her this prestigious selection?

Rai Bachchan’s career has involved both adhering to prototype and straying. She has stuck to as well as defied perception. Even as she married into Bollywood royalty, her own career slowed down. Her ambitions seemed to get smaller. Instead, the bulk of her prime years in the industry were spent in salvaging a career amidst a public spat with an ex, who happened to be one of the country’s biggest stars. She lost roles, turned down many and shunned the spotlight for years.

But her stardom hinges on something beyond the cinematic characters she essays—her timeless beauty. Before Aishwarya Rai descends on the French Riviera at Cannes, she generates endless chatter. Which designer will she team with? What statement will her outfit make? She’s worn everything from Gucci to Armani to Ralph & Russo to Sabyasachi and Manish Malhotra. The run-up to her appearance remains the most frenzied, anticipated aspect of the Cannes film festival, particularly for India, which mostly views it through the lens of relentless glamour. With her film career mostly inert, Rai Bachchan uses the Cannes red carpet to dole out a hearty helping of panache, with legions of fans lapping up and craving for more. Through the years, her stardom seems frozen in time. The paraphernalia surrounding her image has endured more than her bare handful of memorable roles.

Aishwarya’s is the kind of magnetism that once seemed sufficient to buttress a role. Julia Roberts, on one particularly memorable instance, gushingly called her “the most beautiful woman in the world”. However, this allure is simultaneously also a burden. The most acclaimed director can’t resist its trap. Mani Ratnam spun both the Ponniyin Selvan (2022-2023) films around her. As Nandini, she commands, orchestrates revenge and is ultimately swamped by tragic discovery. At least, there’s a gesture towards complex depth. Nevertheless, Ratnam and Ravi Varman’s camera stay devoted to a sheen, instead of human fragility. Throughout, Rai looks distractingly designed—in rich, shimmering light—rather than someone with the grand arc her character holds. Be it Iruvar (1997) or Raavanan (2010), Rai Bachchan gets some of her most striking roles under Ratnam’s helm, who has turned her into something of a muse.

Her career, however, is one strewn with breaks and suspended ambitions. Much of its upsurge can be traced back to 2003, when she returned to Cannes as jury member. It was also the year in which the Time magazine put her on its cover. The title went: ‘The New Face Of Film: Aishwarya Rai leads the invasion as Bollywood goes global and hip’. Unlike its claim, the promise of her international career petered out. She was primed as the symbol of New Bollywood as the Hindi film industry began turning from a disorganised sector to one with contracts in the wake of liberalisation. From a slew of eminently forgettable projects like Bride & Prejudice (2004), Provoked (2006) and The Pink Panther 2 (2009), her crossover into the West is defined either by failure or all that she rejected. Will Smith had offered her four films—Hitch (2005), Seven Pounds (2008), Tonight He Comes (2008), Hancock (2008)—each, she turned down, citing scheduling conflicts. Soon after the Cannes premiere of Devdas, she was offered Brad Pitt-starrer Troy (2004). Since it demanded a chunk of a year to lock off, she opted out, siding with smaller Bollywood films she was committed to. “I couldn’t kick that to the curb”, she had told The Indian Express back then.

Global interest in her revved up as soon as Devdas hit Cannes and the 28-year-old actress emerged a probable international phenomenon. In October 2002, she had meetings with the who’s who of Hollywood, such as Robert de Niro and Spike Lee, amongst leading talent agencies and reputed casting directors. Directors as diverse as Mike Leigh and Roland Joffe met her for possible collaborations, shocked that she had her dates booked till the end of the next year. She was slated to act alongside Meryl Streep, and in India’s first IMAX production. Mira Nair predicted her to be the “next Penelope Cruz”. There was also buzz around her being the next Bond girl. Ultimately, her Hollywood stint didn’t take off, stunted by her preference for familiar spaces within Bollywood confines.

As the global ambassador of cosmetic giant L'Oréal, Rai has been tied with Cannes for over two decades. 2025 marked her 22nd appearance. She calls her association with the brand, which began in 2003, a “familial bond”. Over the years, the brand roped in many Indian actresses—Sonam Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Aditi Rao Hydari—but none has been a mainstay quite as Rai Bachchan. In 2024, Alia Bhatt joined. Despite a galley of younger actresses potentially seeming to upstage Rai Bachchan and hog all attention, the latter triumphs every year. Each of her looks sends the internet into a meltdown. In 2016, her lilac lipstick blew up social media. It sharply divided the internet. Some praised her, while many wove it into memes, trolling and termed it a fashion blunder. While Indians have gradually become a common sight on the Cannes red carpet—especially content creators—none provokes as much debate and heightened speculation. Back in 2016, conversation around Aishwarya included even what exact variant of the purple shade would have worked better. Needless to say, everyone’s obsessed. Neither the festival nor the public have grown disinterested in her. Even as several of her styling choices in recent years have been heavily trolled, Rai Bachchan achieves the task. She gets people talking.

To the media, she divulges nothing. Throughout her career, she has been described as “plastic”, “wooden”, “artificial”, an “ice maiden”. In a 2013 interview with Business Standard, filmmaker and columnist Paromita Vohra said, “Hers is a sort of empirical or quantitative success, by virtue of ticking off all the correct surface qualities”.

In a 2022 interview with Film Companion, Rai Bachchan described herself as “the proverbial tortoise” from her career’s beginning. Post-2010’s Guzaarish, she took a five-year break, returning with Jazbaa (2015), which tanked. She was perceived to take up something in line with her image of high glamour but with Jazbaa, she presented herself as an aggrieved mother—broken and battered, flinging through mud and grime. Just a year later, in Sarbjit, she was hysterical and a screeching departure from the elegance-archetype. The strain to appear like a regular person—stripped of beauty crutches—didn’t do Rai Bachchan any good. When both films widely panned, she quickly reprised her usual avatar in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016). Stylist Anaita Shroff Adajania and costume designer Manish Malhotra, Bollywood’s high priests of glamour, swooped in. The minute Rai pandered to mainstream expectations, she was embraced.

Between 2018’s Fanney, a critical and commercial dud, and the Mani Ratnam reunion with Ponniyin Selvan, Rai Bachchan was again off the big screen. However, even with a flickering film career, brand deals never dried up. Irrespective of hits and flops, international players like Longines have remained loyal to her for two decades.

Rai Bachchan keeps reiterating how selective she is about endorsements or films, and the time she’s willing to apportion to them while having a daughter to raise. Unlike her contemporaries, she has stayed off streaming entirely. She tends to talk more about her upbringing, the need to maintain her Indian roots rather than career stages and global pursuits that took a backseat to family commitments. She’s too busy in curating herself as a paragon of dutiful Indian femininity—a modern girl with traditional values.