Aishwarya Rai – Busy As A Bee!

Marriage may cause careers of many actresses to careen into oblivion, but that’s certainly not the case with Aishwarya Rai , who is in the busiest phase of her professional life. The most beautiful face of Bollywood has in her kitty quite a slew of films with talented directors. The usual suspects include Mani Ratnam and Rituparno Ghosh – both have directed Ash in the past. But there are directors with whom Ash is set to work for the first time, like Abhinay Deo (who’s directing Delhi Belly for Aamir Khan Productions) or Vipul Amrutlal Shah or Vishal Bharadwaj . Her favourite director Rituparno Ghosh, who has done films like ‘Chokher Bali’ (Bengali) and Raincoat (Hindi) with the actress and is always keen to work with her, has finalized one bilingual movie which has Ash in a “challenging role”.

Then she is set to act opposite her hubby Abhishek Bachchan yet again for Abhinay Deo’s film, which, Ash says, is very unlike what she’s done with Abhishek so far.

“It’s a special challenge to work with my husband because we’ve to make sure we don’t repeat ourselves,” quips the Bachchan bahu.

And in Vipul Shah’s next, Ash is paired opposite Akshay Kumar . The duo was last seen in Khakee , where Ash played a negative character. About Shah’s movie, the lady says, “It’s something that Vipul, Akshay and I haven’t done before.”

But the project that’s got her most excited is the one with Vishal Bhradwaj, who is a great storyteller and has given us films like Makdee , Maqbool and Omkara . Incidentally, Vishal and Ash had wanted to work together since he was a music composer. He even planned a film called ‘Timbuctoo’ with her but the project got scrapped. However, Vishal promised Ash that he would cast her whenever he has a role that suits her.

Well, Vishal has at last found that role in the movie he will direct after his next release Kaminey .

Meanwhile, Ash is busy with Mani Ratnam’s Ravana and has her dates-diary full for the remaining year.