‘My approach to life is very student-like,’ says Aishwarya Rai Bachchan at Red Sea Film Festival

That set the tone of the conversation, which lasted an hour. As soon as a star whose image is so carefully constructed and curated all through their glittering public appearances and utterances acknowledges that the magic is all teamwork and they are just the faces, it makes them instantly relatable.

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Aishwarya Rai Bachchan came into the movies after winning the Miss World title in 1994: between her and Sushmita Sen’s winning the Miss Universe title in the same year, nothing was ever the same. Yes, Praveen Babi and Zeenat Aman had won beauty contests, which paved their way into the movies back in the 70s, and their entry into conservative Bollywood suddenly caused a wave of body positivity, but Rai Bachchan and Sen took it to another level.

Both were products of a liberalised India, and their win was cataclysmic in the way it opened up the doors for young girls all over the country: those moments with the two beaming, clutching their crowns, and its consequences, turned the once-reviled beauty industry into an aspirational space for vast swathes of middle-class India. For her, it wasn’t just about winning beauty pageants, she said, it was about representing Indian women on the world stage.

Did she always want to be a star? Not at all. She said, “I thought I’d become a doctor. I was a student of science, and I went into studying architecture in my formative years. Even today, my approach to life is very student-like. Life brought me into showbiz circumstantially. I did a couple of shoots of my professor, who was suffering from cancer, and I did it with a sense of respect and empathy, and it was from there that the world of showbiz opened up.”

The conversation ranged from working with ‘my guru Mani Ratnam’, and Iruvar with which she debuted (this writer remembers watching that film minus subtitles in a Delhi auditorium, and being struck by the luminous Aishwarya Rai in her debut– this was much before she married into the Bachchan family), to how she has always maintained her learning approach in all her roles and career choices, expressing her gratitude to her directors and her fans.

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That she takes her role as a mother very seriously has never been hidden. At this Red Sea interaction too, she touches upon her unshakeable bond with Aradhya Bachchan, who has accompanied her mother on the global stage over the years, having participated in what her mother does as naturally as other mums would take their kids to the office. Playing dress-up is so much a part of the profession, and her daughter understands it, she said, recounting a heartwarming incident when both of them walked out in Cannes, red-carpet ready, a real mom-and-daughter image.

But for all that, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan said Aradhya is not on social media, and her own engagement with it is pretty basic. She added that it is important to shut out the noise.