1. – Nayanthara Sivaji, India, 2007. For Bollywood, the casting saga of the Sivaji girls matched a Bond Girl hunt. Seven stars jostled for the titular gangster’s moll (from Aishwarya Rai to Ayesha Taki) and six more for the Balleilakka dance number: from Asin to Shilpa Shetty.
2. – Aishwarya Rai, Endhiran/The Robot/Robo, India, 2010. The Queen of Kollywood was trounced by The Queen of Bollywood… 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 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.” As if we didn’t know!
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Asin ThottumkalCasting Calls: 2