Trivia/More information from Wiki-pedia
Born on November 1, 1973; Ash (to fans and media) is a supermodel and an award-winning actress from India.
She is currently regarded as one of the biggest names in Bollywood.

Early life
She was born in Mangalore to Krishnaraj and Vrinda Rai, in the South Indian state of Karnataka; her mother tongue is Tulu.

In the 1994 Miss India Contest she placed second behind Sushmita Sen and went on to win the Miss World title.

As a professional model, she has appeared in many Indian fashion magazines, including the Indian Vogue; more recently she has featured in international ads for L'Oréal, De Beers Diamonds, and Coca-Cola.

Bollywood breakthrough
The first film she acted in was the popular Tamil movie Iruvar in (1997), directed by Mani Ratnam. her earliest films made money, but she did not impress critics -- they commented that her performances were stilted, as if she were still modeling.

Her breakthrough came with Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Later successes include Taal and Devdas. She has also acted in other Tamil films such as Jeans, Kandukondain Kandukondain, and in the Bengali film Chokher Bali.

International stardom

She was on the cover of Cosmopolitan India magazine.Devdas, in which she joined Bollywood superstars Shah Rukh Khan and Madhuri Dixit, was a huge hit, lavishly produced as it was. The film attracted overseas attention as well, receiving a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

She was becoming an international star rather than simply a Bollywood one. In 2003, she was a member of the jury at Cannes. In 2004, she was chosen by TIME Magazine's Asian Edition as one of Asia's "100 Most Influential People." She was the subject of a 60 Minutes profile on January 2, 2005 - "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World." A month later she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, and on April 25, 2005, she was featured on Oprah's "Women Across the Globe" segment. A wax figure of Rai is on display in London's Madame Tussaud's wax museum.

Although frequently the subject of gossip column speculation about an imminent Hollywood career, it was only in 2004 that she finally acted in a foreign film. British director Gurinder Chadha hired her to play the heroine in Bride and Prejudice, a Hollywood-funded but Bollywood-ized version of Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice. The movie did well at the box office and her Hollywood profile rose a notch.

She is now said to be signed for another Hollywood movie, Rolland Joffe's project Singularity. She will star opposite Brendan Fraser.
She is in the cast for The Last Legion co-starring Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley.
She recently (summer of 2005) completed filming on director Jagmohan Mundhra's film Provoked. She is co-starring with Nandita Das. The film was shot mainly in Britain.

Personal life
Earlier in her career, she was involved in a high profile, allegedly turbulent relationship with Bollywood star Salman Khan. It apparently caused her to be dropped from a Shah Rukh Khan film when Salman's supposedly numerous and rowdy visits disrupted filming and Shah Rukh's personal safety.

Since then she has been romantically linked to rising star Vivek Oberoi and film dynasty scion Abhishek Bachchan.

Awards
She has won two Filmfare Awards to date:

2000, Filmfare Best Actress Award, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam
2003, Filmfare Best Actress Award, Devdas
She has been nominated four times in the Best Actress category and once in the Best Supporting Actress category at the Filmfare.

She has also won three IIFA Awards, three Z-Gold Awards, four Screen Awards, an EU's Global Diversity Award, three Zee Cine Awards and a Rajiv Gandhi Award.