Dhoom, which released in 2004, saw Sanjay Gadhvi and Yash Raj Films gave Bollywood action-thriller which has since become a benchmark for action. The film, now considered a cult classic, in many ways gave the audiences a taste of the “likable bad guy". Add to that the suave of superbikes and the thrill of a heist.
The film’s success and popularity amounted to a sequel with Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan, which also became a blockbuster. While there are countless memorable scenes in the film, the one that became the talk of the town was the passionate lip-lock between Hrithik and Aishwarya. Not only did she receive backlash but was also issued several legal notices. The actress had previously confessed that she was ‘not very comfortable’ with filming such scenes.
Back in 2012, during an interview with the Daily Mail, Aishwarya Rai had gone candid about her 2006 multi-starrer heist film. She had revealed how that scene led to ‘multiple notices’ to her. The actress had shared, “I did it once prominently in the movie Dhoom and it was so topical, and you’ll be surprised, I mean I actually got a couple of notices, legal notices, from some people in the country turning around and saying “You are iconic, you’re an example to our girls you have led your life in such an exemplary manner, they’re not comfortable with you doing this on screen so why did you?"
She further added, “And I was like wow, I’m just an actor, doing my job, and here I am being asked to offer an explanation for a couple of seconds in a two, three hour piece of cinema.
It was around the same time that the interest in the western world from Hollywood, or European cinema, English cinema, from the industry there was a lot interest in me and the possibility of me working overseas, and I had already declined a couple of scripts purely on the basis of not being comfortable with the very physical scenes and the kissing because I’d never done that on screen and I just wasn’t very comfortable with the idea.”
Aishwarya Rai also explained that apart from her, even her fans were uncomfortable with the idea of her doing such scenes for the big screen, “And I was quite sure even my audience was not very comfortable with me doing it on-screen. I was actually quite convinced about it but I still said okay, if I have to go down this path let me first do it in our cinema, in an Indian piece of cinema, and let me see if all my doubts are true, and they were. A lot of actors have kissed before that movie, they continue to kiss on screen till this very minute, but public display is not that common in Indian culture. Even our actors, it’s very rare that actors look comfortable in our cinema on screen kissing. It almost looks like it’s a planned moment, just to make much ado about a moment or to excite the audience. It’s made into this separate entity from a scene, it’s not very comfortable in our screenplay,” she concluded.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was last seen in the highly anticipated film Ponniyin Selvan 2, a magnum opus directed by acclaimed filmmaker Mani Ratnam. The movie boasted an ensemble cast, including Shobhita Dhulipala, Aishwarya Lekshmi, and Karthi, among others. Her stellar performances in such movies have earned her a special place in the hearts of cinema lovers.
