Do we like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean, kind-looking run of decades with women's safety work on the record, held back from the top only because the file on LGBTQ+ and wider causes is thin.
Born in 1973, she won Miss World in 1994 and stepped into film in 1997 with the Tamil film Iruvar and the Hindi film Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya. The big ones followed: Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas earned her two Filmfare Best Actress awards, and she later crossed over with Bride & Prejudice and The Pink Panther 2. More recently she turned up in Mani Ratnam's two-part Ponniyin Selvan.
The one real shadow is the Panama Papers saga. In December 2021 the Enforcement Directorate questioned her in Delhi for about six hours under foreign exchange law, after the ICIJ reportedly linked her to a British Virgin Islands entity set up in 2005 and dissolved in 2008. She had reportedly skipped earlier summonses, and officials said she handed over documents. No charges or findings were reported in the coverage we opened, and she made no public statement there.
The recent stoush is about Cannes, not her conduct. After L'Oréal's pre-festival material was criticised for leaving out a long-time ambassador, her red carpet looks were picked apart online for her age and body. Madhuri Dixit told PTI you can't reduce her to a number on a scale, and Kangana Ranaut wrote that “She is glorious.” She has reportedly chosen not to respond publicly.
On the good side, the record is mostly steady rather than showy. She was honoured with the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian award, in 2009. In 2025 she went to the Delhi High Court over unauthorised use of her name and image online, and won interim protection, a case that also gives other targets of that kind of misuse something to point to.
So the verdict: she passes on harm and passes on nice, with an honest caveat that the file is thin on the causes this page cares about most. A quiet public life, women's safety campaigning and no court findings add up to a comfortable yes, not a gushing ten.