- Asin, Dasavatharam, India, 2006. Planning the most roles played by an actor, Kamal Hassan’s choice of different actresses opposite his ten characters (Nayanthara, Vidya Balan, Bhoomika Chawla, Nithya Das, Vasundhara Das, Meera Jasmine, Jyothika, Trisha Krishnan, Meena, Nadia Moidu, Kamalinee Mukherjee, Mumtaj, Kiran Rathod, Sameera Reddy, Shriya Saran, Simran) was slashed to two: Asin and Mallika Sherawat.
- Shriya Saran, Sivaji, India, 2007. For Bollywood, the casting saga of the Sivaji girls matched a Bond Girl hunt. Nayanthara lost the battle with six other luminaries jostling for the titular gangster’s moll – the Tamil star held her nerve and won the Balleilakka dance number from five other contenders.
- 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 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.” (Yeah, like we don’t know).
Birth year: 1950Death year: 2014Other name: Casting Calls: 3