Beautiful world

FORMER Miss World turned actress Aishwarya Rai isn't going to start kissing her leading men just because she's temporarily quit Bollywood for Hollywood. Co-star Martin Henderson doesn't get so much as a peck on the cheek from her in Bride And Prejudice, the new movie from Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha. The film fuses the best of Bollywood and Hollywood in an contemporary version of Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice.

Ash - called the world's most beautiful woman by no less than Julia Roberts - has never done a kissing scene in her Indian movies and shows no inclination to do one now.

"Let's cross that bridge when we come to it," she says about breaking the no kissing rule. "There are Bollywood movies now that have kissing and other things. It's more about personal choice. In the early days of Bollywood movies there were passionate kisses. There are no rules, it's just the way it's been in Indian films."

The actress beat Nicole Kidman and Catherine Zeta Jones in a celebrity magazine poll in 2003 to find the most attractive woman of the year. That didn't stop her piling on the pounds to play Lalita, the feisty Elizabeth Bennet character in Bride And Prejudice. She added 20lbs because she was keen on Lalita "looking really normal, like the girl next door".

Since becoming Miss World a decade ago, the science and architecture student who modelled on the side has become one of Bollywood's top movie stars as well as the first Indian actor to be a member of the Cannes film festival jury. She already has roles in two Hollywood movies lined up for this year - Chaos, opposite Meryl Streep, and Singularity, with Brendan Fraser. Yet she has no intention of abandoning Bollywood for Hollywood as she enjoys working there so much.

"Bollywood will always be my priority," she says. "The characters I've played are all intrinsically Indian and the only reason I'm taking up international projects is because I'm thankful to God for the opportunity I've got so far. I never approached Hollywood with stardust in my eyes." She didn't regard Bride And Prejudice as any different to any other movie she's made. "My approach is not to make comparisons but treat each one as a different experience, no matter which director, which language or which industry," she says.

"Although it's known as a Bollywood film industry, there are movies in India made in different languages. The experience of Bride And Prejudice was rather different to the ones in Bollywood, but there's positive in all and this has been wonderful working with Gurinder."

She had no fears about her debut in European cinema, just glad of the chance to act in an English movie. She dismisses internet rumours, circulating for 18 months, that she's going to be the next Bond girl. For Bride and Prejudice's William Darcy - turned into an American whose family own luxury hotels - Chandha cast New Zealand born and raised Martin Henderson. He moved to Los Angeles five years ago and got his Hollywood break in the horror hit The Ring.

Darcy is initially dismissive of Indian culture, an attitude that brings him into conflict with outspoken Lalita. Henderson found it a strange experience playing a man who, in many ways, is the complete opposite of himself. "I started travelling the world at an early age as a lot of New Zealanders do. I was able to spend a lot of time in developing nations and backpacking," he explains.

"When not filming, I was taking every opportunity to go off and explore some other region of India in which we didn't shoot. It was hard for me not to judge the character as I loved everything about the experience of being in India."

He was at home in LA reading a bunch of scripts when his agent sent him Bride and Prejudice. He thought it a fresh and original idea. He knew Chadha's work through Bend It Like Beckham, which he'd seen on a plane. "I saw Keira Knightley on the screen, thought, 'Who is that?' and put on my headphones," he recalls.

"I was pretty familiar with Pride And Prejudice and the themes of the movie attracted me. Having lived in different places around the world, I just love what it says about getting over differences and accepting them."

DIRECTOR Gurinder Chadha faced two testing screenings of her latest film Bride And Prejudice last week - one in Bombay, the other in Bath.

The movie is the result of Chadha's wish to make a Bollywood movie that would appeal to western audiences.She was nervous at the Indian screening as it was for top Bollywood film-makers that she admires.

"For the first ten minutes there was just silence, basically me and Paul (her husband and co-writer) laughing at our own gags," she recalls. "Then after that they got used to it. They thought it was weird seeing Ash (leading lady, top Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai speaking in English and seeing lots of cows at the beginning of the movie. I was showing cows and ordinary street life which rarely gets shown in films in India."

After the screening, they gave her film the thumbs up. Two days later she was in Bath showing the movie to the Jane Austen Society. "There were all these people dressed in bonnets and Regency clothes, all the Jane Austen gear, and guys dressed like Colin Frith as Darcy. They were all very excited and said they hoped I hadn't meddled with the text," she says.

"The day before, someone on the radio had complained about what I'd do to the novel, but the Austen people ended up really liking the film because it worked for them as a movie but was also true to Jane Austen's spirit.

"In the end, it's a very global movie that takes place in a global landscape. That's ultimately why it can work in Bombay and Bath. It shows the real power of the cinema and the fact that it can cross all kinds of boundaries."

Bride And Prejudice came about after Chandra, a former BBC TV reporter and award-winning documentary film-maker, had a bad experience trying to make her own Bollywood movie back in 1996.

She was approached by a big Indian movie star and producer, but it soon became clear that the way they made huge Bollywood productions, which she loved, was different to how she was used to working. "He wanted to introduce action that was not part of my romantic movie," she says.

"I didn't bother pursuing that film. I did What's Cooking? instead in America and wrote the script for Bride And Prejudice while we were trying to raise the money for Bend It Like Beckham.

"I didn't want to make a film that would play to a pure, typical Hindi audience. There are many people doing that and doing it well. For me, I had a different audience with Bend It Like Beckham, a global audience interested in seeing the world from this international perspective."

Once she and Paul Mayeda Berges began translating Austen's novel into a Bollywood scenario about a meddlesome, match-making mother trying to marry off her four daughters to rich husbands, Chadha realised how well the themes worked in contemporary Indian society.

She's got into "the whole Indian thing of karma" when it comes to finding the right actors for the roles in her movies. "I believe casting is going through the process and whoever is destined to play that role ends up playing it," she says. "If I was meeting a whole bunch of actors on a particular day why does one shine more than others. There are so many actors who could play these roles. I think a lot of it is fate.

"It's always lovely when actors come and run with the roles. I think Martin ended up playing a much more sensitive Darcy that we imagined when we were writing it," she says.

"And Ash is acting for the first time in Englis h. When we started on the part I was really shocked. I thought, 'This really works' - because I'd never seen her work in English before. There are lots of lovely nuances the actors bring."

Bride And Prejudice (12A) opens in cinemas today.

Published: 07/10/2004