When she entered the Miss India pageant in 1994, she was the clear favourite to win and, indeed, nobody expected her not to. Eventually dropping out of her architecture course, Aishwarya quickly became the model every designer wanted to book and every brand wanted as their face. While Aishwarya was at Jai Hind College, photos taken by a professor were published in a fashion magazine and there was no looking back.After school, she went to Jai Hind College for a year and considered a career in medicine before finally enrolling for an architecture degree in Mumbai's Raheja College.

She grew up in Mumbai and her first modeling assignment, for Camlin, came when she was in the ninth grade.

Her older brother is an engineer in the Merchant Navy. Her father was a marine biologist and her mother a homemaker. Mangalorean Aishwarya was born on November 1, 1973, into a family with no showbiz connections whatsoever.The single line of dialogue she had in the commercial made her instantly famous - 'Hi, I'm Sanjana,' she breathed, sending male pulses racing. Aishwarya had already participated in the international Ford Supermodel contest and was about to star opposite Aamir Khan in a commercial for Pepsi. The year was 1991 and the blue-eyed stunner was 17 and just starting out as a model. Possibly India's best known face, and certainly it's most glamorous, 40-year-old Aishwarya Rai's tryst with destiny began 22 years ago, when she appeared in style bible American Vogue.

Kuch na kaho episode 40