- Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Endhiran/The Robot/Robo, India, 2010. During the decade it took Tollywood director S Shankar to make his dream project, various Hindi and Tamil ladies were set to be Sana, with whom the robot, Chitthi, falls in love. As it became India’s priciest movie, $35m (double Bollywood’s Blue budget), with costumes, stunts, SFX by the Batman, Matrix, Jurassic Park teams, locations in Austria, Brazil, Peru, USA, it was inevitable who would co-star with Rajnkanth, 60, the bus conductor turned moustachioed megastar of 150 action movies and worshipped, quite literally, by fans of the Kannada, Malayalam, Ytamil, Telugu, language movies of South Indian cinema – India’s largest. “There’s no other beauty in our generation like Aishwarya Rai,” he said. “She’s a born artiste.” Like we didn’t know that.
- Diana Penty, Cocktail, India, 2012. Deepika being Deepika, she was offered the choice of Saif Ali Khan’s two leading ladies. She chose Veronica, close to her 2009 breakthrough role in Love Aaj Kal. And Diana, her successor as Maybelline brand ambassador, became Meera.
- Nathalie Emmanuel, Furious 7, 2014. The Bollywood queen made her Hollywood debut opposite Vin Diesel. Just not as first planned. She had to refuse Ramsey in Vin’s seventh Fast and Furious saga because of her Indian commitments. However, with a bound she was free for the latest chapter of Diesel’s other franchise, xXx : Return of Xander Cage, 2016. The British Emmanuel played Ramsey again in The Fate of the Furious, 2016.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 3