Looking Forward To Working With Mani Ratnam: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will be soon teaming up with frequent collaborator, filmmaker Mani Ratnam, and the actor says it’s always a joy to work with the director. Aishwarya and Ratnam have teamed up for a film which will reportedly feature the actor in a double role.

Aishwarya, who has previously worked with Ratnam in films like “Iruvar”, “Guru” and “Raavan”, said she doesn’t have to think much before saying yes to the filmmaker.

“It is definitely an experience I’m looking forward to for multiple reasons. Mani is my guru and he is one of the most amazing and brilliant directors of our country.

“I’ve had the honour, privilege and joy of working with him right in the beginning of my career and several times later. It’s an easy yes to work with that kind of cinematic brilliance,” the actor told reporters here.

She was speaking at a special event of Disney’s “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”. The actor has given her voice for Angelina Jolie’s character, Maleficent, in the Hindi dubbed version of the film.

Aishwarya said for the first time she was dubbing for a character she hadn’t played on screen and it was a learning experience.

“When you’re the actor, you work with the director on sets and know where and how you want to play a character. When you go to do dubbing, you decide the way you want to essay a particular scene because you had enacted it.

“But this time I was going to do voice-over for a role enacted by another actor and then we were changing the language... It was a collaborative effort on arriving at how to say those lines.”

The 45-year-old actor said Jolie has played the title character in a slightly theatrical manner.

“There is a theatrical manner in which she says her lines, because of her physicality, the way she’s created the character, that makes her speak in a certain way. First day, we did it like a match, almost the way she had done it and then we revisited some scenes to tweak and change it.

“So the entire exercise was very interesting and new... It’s a classic story and has classic emotions which are addressed in the drama of it. So the lines can be written that way and you can play it out in the typical way Indians emote and yet you’ve to find the balance between the way you say lines the way Maleficent would in a scenario. It was creatively enriching,” she added.

The film is scheduled to release on October 18.