Not just a beauty queen

Hailing from Tamil cinema, Aishwarya Rajesh is going to be seen as the leading lady in the film Daddy, alongside Arjun Rampal. She has received numerous accolades for her critically acclaimed roles in Tamil movies and has been called "extremely promising" by many critics. Daddy, directed by Ashim Ahluwalia will be her debut Bollywood movie and that too in a leading role. Even though Aishwarya isn't well-versed in Hindi, she was selected for playing a Marathi woman in the biopic on Arun Gawli.

The director, Ashim explains why they selected Aishwarya despite the language barrier, "The film was with different producers in the initial phase but then we got rid of them and Arjun became the producer. The initial producers were getting into the filmy terrain and wanted the same old glam stars in the biopic, but none of them looked like Asha Gawli, they looked like some models from Slovenia or something. Now we are taking the trouble to put prosthetics on Arjun's face to make him look like Arun Gawli and the wife (Asha) is going to look like some German woman! Asha Gawli is not a beauty queen; she is a very powerful woman because she has to take charge when Arun is in jail. So, I said that I need a woman who can actually carry this off. We went beyond Mumbai and then in the south we saw Aishwarya who was just a perfect fit. We called her, she learned all her lines phonetically and we simply dubbed her."

Talking about her role in the film, Aishwarya says, "I had no idea about who Arun Gawli or Asha was and I only met Asha 15 days back in a function. People told me that Asha is a very bold woman and she took charge of everything when Arun was in jail. So, I only had a vague imagination about her."

Even after working in more than 15 Tamil films, Aishwarya says that she was still doubtful as to why they selected her instead of some Marathi girl. But feels that it was Arjun who was most confident about her playing the role of Asha.

Looking at her filmography and the roles she has played, Aishwarya has not really done a full-fledged commercial movie. And when people ask her the reason behind this, she says, "When you are doing good films with directors like Mani Ratnam and Gautam Menon, you don't need to go commercial. I feel that appearing for just 2-3 songs like a glam doll is not my cup of tea. I want to do something really different with each performance."

Daddy, with Arjun Rampal playing the gangster-turned-politician and Aishwarya playing his wife, will hit the screens this Friday.