Aishwarya returns to big screen
CANNES: After a five-year break to embrace motherhood, Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan marked her return to the big screen by taking on one of her most demanding roles, playing a mother whose child is kidnapped in the thriller Jazbaa.
A former Miss World and one of the most successful actresses in Bollywood, Rai Bachchan said the film had stretched her as an actress, with each day posing new challenges that she had to overcome.
“Every day when I came to work I kept saying, how am I supposed to wrap my head around the situation like this, on any human level?” the actress said at the Cannes Film Festivalwhere Jazbaa made its debut.
“That to me just seemed tough, demanding, gruelling, challenging and, thereby, so interesting.”
Rai Bachchan, 41, was Miss World in 1994, often features on “most beautiful” lists and is one half of a Bollywood supercouple with actor husband Abhishek Bachchan, the son of Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan.
Her prolific Bollywood career includes hits such as Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas, and she has also starred in Hollywood movies, such as The Pink Panther 2.
Jazbaa (Passion), directed by Sanjay Gupta, is the first acting project for Rai Bachchan since she had her first child in 2011. Gupta said the actress had tapped into a “very raw” performance, in which a lawyer and single mother (Rai Bachchan) “has to do the impossible” to get her kidnapped daughter back. Life of Pi actor Irrfan Khan co-stars.
Rai said Jazbaa was a strong female drama, but she didn’t want that to distract from the film’s main content. – Reuters