Aishwarya Rai birthday: 6 lesser-known facts about Bollywood diva

Before her rise to fame in the '90s, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan did her first commercial when she was still in school, for Camlin pencils. However, it was a popular advertisement for Pepsi back in 1993 co-starring Aamir Khan, that gained her attention.

While Aishwarya is often referred to as ‘Aish’ by her close friends in the industry but she also has a cute nickname name given by her family. The star’s sister-in-law, Shrima Rai, once revealed on her Instagram stories that Rai Bachchan’s stardom is never a topic at home, and that she is just the much-loved ‘Gullu maami’ to her two nephews. 

Abhishek Bachchan revealed in an interview with Oprah, how he proposed to his then-girlfriend. “I was filming in New York for a movie, and I used to stand on my balcony of my hotel room and wish that one day… wouldn't it be nice if I was together with [Aishwarya], married? So I took her to the very same balcony, and I asked her to marry me.” Bachchan even gifted her the same ring she wore in Guru, the movie that the duo was co-starring in when they fell in love. 

A special variety of tulips in the famous Keukenhof garden in the Netherlands was named after Aishwarya Rai Bachchan back in 2005. The managing director of the Netherlands board of tourism, Hans Van Driem, said the tulips were a celebration of Rai Bachchan’s beauty.  

Aishwarya Rai is the first Bollywood actress to have her wax statue installed at the Madame Tussauds Museum. She is also first Indian actress to be a jury member at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. 

Before she pursued her career in acting, Aishwarya Rai wanted to continue her studies in medicine. Later, she dropped the idea and decided to study architecture and got enrolled at Rachana Sansad Academy of Architecture. But she quit her studies to become a model