1999 was Aishwarya Rai's breakthrough year. Though she made her debut years before (1997 in Iruvar) - and she was already famous beyond belief in 1993 when she became Miss World - with a double whammy of success movies Taal (L) and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (R) in 1999 - Rai ruled Bollywood. She also picked up a double Best Actress nomination for each respective film (and an unsurprising win for HDDCS!)
Plus the year she grinned her way through impressive advertising deals with Coca Cola - even though she was the first Pepsi gal (Hi i'm Sanju!) for the region.
Update: PS: An ex classmate of Aishwarya Rai wrote this and we are not surprised:
"I studied for a year at Jaihind College, Mumbai, in the science stream. Aishwarya joined the college later, as she had initially joined KC College. Since KC College was quite close to my college, guys struck by her beauty in that college would come and stand at our college gates. She was strikingly beautiful even then. She would travel by train, and would board at Khar station. If we happened to be together, we would walk to college, which is a few minutes from Churchgate. Boys (and girls) would just stop to look at her in awe. She had a big group of friends and they would enter class at the last moment, and would always sit on the last bench. But they would sit in the first bench for the Physics lectures because we had a very strict teacher, and because Aishwarya wanted to impress the teacher. She was the apple of all the teachers’ eyes, especially the Physics lecturer who was the one to encourage her to appear in the college magazines, I think. She was very down-to-earth and good at her studies. Everyone called her the most beautiful girl in college and soon, she proved to be the most beautiful girl in the world.”
