One of India’s most famous actresses domestically, Aishwarya Rai Bacchan started her career in modeling. She was raised and educated in Mumbai, and her big break came in 1991 when she won an international modeling contest and landed a spot in American Vogue. Three years later, Bachchan (competing under her maiden name Rai) was runner-up in Miss India, and won the Miss World pageant. Another three years would pass, and Rai made her film debut in a Tamil political drama. Many of her early roles were in Tamil, although she had appearances in Bollywood from the beginning.
Her career in Bollywood pivoted in 1999, when she had a breakthrough after appearing in a now classic Bollywood movie Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Rai Bachchan began to be acknowledged as an actress after her role in the film, and ever since then her career has continued to climb. Throughout the following decade in the 2000s Rai Bachchan continued to star in some of the most successful films and with some of the biggest actors of her generation. Although she took a break for several years at the end of the decade and got married, she has gradually returned to the big screen, showing why she is one of the biggest Bollywood stars around. These are Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's best movies so far.
12 Guzaarish
Guzaarish came out in theaters back in 2010, and stars Hrithik Roshan in the lead role. He is a former magician that is now a quadriplegic, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to spread magic in different ways. He becomes a radio jockey at a station called Radio Zindagi, then defies the expectations of what a person who is paralyzed can and cannot do in this society.
But when 14 years pass since the accident happened, he decides he wants to have a mercy killing and begins the legal process to try and achieve that. But when he meets a young man who wants to learn magic tricks, he can’t pass up that opportunity.
11 Jodhaa Akbar
Jodhaa Akbar continues the collaboration between Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Buchchan, as they play a historical couple that actually existed in real life. The epic film is set during the period in which the Mughal Empire still existed, and Roshan portrays the Emperor of the kingdom. He is Muslim, but is arranged to marry a Hindu princess under the premise that their union will help unify the people across the lands. Their marriage will prove to be a unique one, and with new challenges emerging across the nation, they will be put to the test.
10 Raavanan
Released in 2010, Raavanan is actually a movie in Tamil. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan stars alongside Vikram and Prithviraj, and was the first time Rai Bachchan returned to a Tamil film — despite starting her career in the genre. In a region where political conflict is ripe and insurgents are active, a well-known one (Vikram) launches a raid against the local police officers. He takes an officer’s wife with him on the way out (Rai Bachchan), and he hopes to avenge the death of his sister by killing the wife the same way she died. However, she begins to develop Stockholm Syndrome after resisting her kidnappers.
9 Kandukondain Kandukondain
A Tamil romance, Kandukondain Kandukondain is based on the English novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. The film was a massive success commercially when it released in 2000, and cemented the early part of Rai Bachchan’s career. A member of the Indian military finds himself in a precarious situation while in Sri Lanka: an explosion leaves him missing his right leg.
This story is initially juxtaposed against a match-making process between families in order to get their children successfully married off. This film is about the simple things and relationships that keep us going through life, making it an excellent watch at least once.
8 Guru
Guru first made its worldwide debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, and was directed by Rani Matnam. Set in Gujarat during the 1950s, a young village boy decides one day he’s going to be someone great, despite him being told the opposite by the people around him. This leads him to go to Turkey in search of work, and after returning to his village, he gets married and sets up a textile company in Bombay. There, he begins to make connections and ends up becoming a business magnate in India, which turns him into a dishonest person along the way. Suddenly, he might lose everything he has worked for.
7 Chokher Bali
Based on the 1903 novel by the Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore, Chokher Bali is a Bangla language film that was dubbed for the actors who didn’t speak Bangla. Rai Bachchan is Binodini, who is a young woman who is now a widow. Her husband died not too long after their wedding, which can be disastrous for many young women. After returning to her home village, she decides to live with a woman and her son, but when the son falls for her and not his wife, that will cause new problems.
6 Raincoat
2004’s Raincoat has Rai Bachchan and Ajay Devgn portraying two lovers overcoming the circumstances set out by fate. The boy, Manoj, is sent to Kolkata by his mother in search of work to procure the money for his sister’s wedding. As the days pass, Manoj becomes more frantic while looking for a job, and his friend advises him to visit the woman Manoj was supposed to marry — it seems fate has given her more wealth than she needs. When he appears at her doorstep, it will change their futures whether they want it to or not.
5 Khakee
In Khakee, a group of police officers are brought together for a new mission. It seems a specific individual is the source of riots across the region, and when they come across a schoolteacher on their search, she informs them she thinks she has come across a group of terrorists. They go to investigate her claim in Mumbai, but when their van starts to break down, they stop on the side of the road. After some revelations, this proves to be a big mistake, as the suspected terrorists aren’t the only ones being watched it seems.
4 Taal
Aishwarya Rai Bacchan, Akshaye Khanna, and Anil Kapoor all star in the 1999 movie Taal, which had its premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival. It would later become the first big Indian movie globally that had a high box office turnout. Wealthy Jagmohan comes to Chamba in India for a vacation with his family, and while there, they meet the daughter of a famous spiritual singer. The Jagmohan’s son falls in love with her, but because she is also not rich like them, Jagmohan disapproves of this potential love interest for his son. So begins a tortured love story between the two.
3 Iruvar
In 2012, the Sight & Sound poll ranked the Indian film Iruvar as one of the best movies of all time. Set many years ago in the forties, an aspiring actor hustles trying to land roles. He goes to all of the studios producing the movies during that time in search of work, and along the way he meets a writer he likes. Because he understands the writer’s literature, the actor lands a leading role. But when he ends up getting involved with political parties along with his new acting work, it will complicate his life in ways he couldn’t imagine before.
2 Devdas
Devdas came out in 2002, and was very epic when it released. The movie features Shah Rukh Khan, Rai Bachchan, and Madhuri Dixit in the lead roles. A mother is overjoyed to realize her son is returning home from London, which he has been residing in for ten years while attending law school. When he comes home, he falls in love with his childhood best friend, but his mother disapproves of the pair because of how she thinks the girl’s bloodline is impure. When they break up because of this, it sparks major depression and alcoholism in the son, who finds solace in a courtesan (Dixit).
1 Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam
The role that launched Rai Buchchan’s career to the next level, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam is one of the biggest roles she is associated with to this day. Rai Bachchan portrays Nandini, the daughter of an Indian classical musician, and when a young man is announced to be staying with the family (Salman Khan) in order to learn classical music, the two end up falling in love. When they are caught rehearsing wedding vows, he is banished from the home and her father quits singing due to the shame his daughter has brought on the family, and Nandini is wed to someone else even when her heart is still with her beloved Sameer.