The biggest star you've never seen

Aishwarya Rai is among the planet's biggest box-office draws. So why doesn't Hollywood know what to do with her?

By Charles Taylor

Feb 10, 2005 | In a promo for the cable channel Imaginasian, a service that targets Asians who have settled in the United States, an attractive group of young Asians talk about the reasons they tune in. The most potent comes from a young man who says that the only people he sees who look like him on American TV are playing the gardener, or the computer nerd.

The pickings are even slimmer at the movies.

The foreign stars Hollywood has traditionally welcomed have been overwhelmingly white Europeans or some variety of Anglo-Saxon. That has remained true since silent movies, even as the cinemas of other countries have produced their own stars. No region of the world has produced more charismatic screen personalities in the last 20 or so years than Asia, and due to bad distribution of foreign films and Hollywood's passing them over, almost none of those stars are widely known here. Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh all have received second-class treatment in Hollywood. And while Zhang Ziyi, who dazzles in "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers" (and does her best acting yet in Wong Kar-Wai's upcoming "2046"), is filming "Memoirs of a Geisha" for "Chicago" director Rob Marshall, Hollywood's more typical use of her is the meager supporting bit she had in "Rush Hour 2." Tony Leung and Andy Lau are so charismatic and commanding in "Infernal Affairs" (dumped into theaters here by Miramax) you'd expect a Hollywood that retains any sense of what constitutes star power to be beating down their doors. Instead, Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio will take over their roles in Martin Scorsese's planned American remake.

It's against this background that the Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai is making her Western film debut. Miss World at 21, Rai, now 30, is one of Bollywood's two or three biggest stars. And since India's film business is the world's biggest, that means that Rai is one of the planet's biggest stars. Her first Western film is "Bride & Prejudice," a loose adaptation of Jane Austen's novel directed by Gurinder Chadha ("Bend It Like Beckham"). She will also be seen in Coline Serreau's American version of her French thriller "Chaos" with Meryl Streep, and Roland Joffe's "Singularity" with Brendan Fraser.

It's too soon to tell whether Rai is a great star or, in the final tally, a memorable one. She is certainly a creature born to be in front of a movie camera -- one to weep with in her tragic roles, and sigh over the rest of the time. Stunningly beautiful with fine cheekbones and big, luminous eyes, Rai is right at home in the dreamy, romantic patches of Bollywood films (in "I Have Found It," she even gets to swoon). But she can narrow those eyes appraisingly, snap out a retort to put some upstart in his place, and be as enjoyably tart as she can be meltingly vulnerable.

So, given her prominence in the world's biggest film industry, given that she has already achieved the glamour and popular appeal that makes a movie star, the question is, What can Hollywood do for Aishwarya Rai that Bollywood hasn't already done?

Judging from "Bride & Prejudice," not much. Miramax perpetrated Gurinder Chadha's attempt to introduce Bollywood style into a movie aimed at Westerners, and Chadha doesn't have the precision, the craft or, most important, the belief in the conventions she is employing to make the movie work. Rai has been given perhaps the clumsiest entrance accorded any gorgeous star in recent memory: She's seen in medium shot on the back of a cart as workers toil in the fields. Is this Bollywood or socialist calendar art?

Worse than Chadha's ineptitude is her cluelessness about the form. In this gloss on "Pride and Prejudice" the Darcy character is played by Martin Henderson, who has a name like a law firm and a romantic presence to match. (Rai's sister's suitor is played by Naveen Andrews of "Lost," and woe betide the attempts of any bland pretty boy to be a romantic lead when Andrews is around.) Chadha's Darcy is the ugly American, making self-satisfied comments about how backward India and its customs are. His character is summed up by his intended business venture: a luxury hotel that would in effect save Western tourists from having to actually experience the surrounding culture.

And yet that is exactly the audience Chadha has made this movie for. She has blanded out the conventions and charm of Bollywood cinema in order to appeal to a Western audience. The irony is that an audience with some experience of Hollywood might find themselves right at home watching Bollywood entertainments, and it's galling that, for many Western moviegoers, their first exposure to a Bollywood picture is no more distinctive than the latest Kate Hudson vehicle.

Next Page: Where to see Rai really shine

• View blog reactions