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Aishwarya, with no connections to the industry, has come a long long long way in her career and is among the most popular and accomplished actresses in the annals of Indian cinema.
Her popularity is unquestionable, she is known all over the world and was dubbed by Forbes magazine as the most bankable Indian star in the world, ahead of Amitabh Bachchan and the Khans.
Her body of work is extremely versatile and is filled with risky and experimentative projects. She worked in as many as four different industries, and continues to experiment to this day. Turning down a Happy New Year in favour of a very risky Jazbaa is an example. She is coming back with Jazbaa even though she has big films like Karan Johar's ADHM, Sujoy's Suspect X and Mani's upcoming film in the pipeline.
Her box office track record is always undermined here. It is frankly not anywhere as bad as some would like to portray it. She delivered successful movies for the most part of her career except the two years 2004-05 where she did not deliver any hits, except Khakee which was successful. But it was the same time almost the whole industry was against her because of the Khan-war, and yet she stood her ground and stayed true to her principles, without compromising anything.
Even during that bleak period of 2004-05 where Rani and Preity were doing projects most of which were meant for Aishwarya, and they were all big hits and Aishwarya had flops, she still was more in demand than the other two and charged a premium remuneration.
Just look at the fact that Rani and Preity disappeared alarmingly fast after 2006 whereas Ash began a new phase just then and her new contemporaries were Kareena, Priyanka, Katrina and Deepika. I think that says enough about whether she is a top actress or not - she has always been one, ever since her debut.
Kajol is the only other actor who has sustained herself as well as Aishwarya did, but then Kajol had done mostly big banner films with YRF and Dharma whereas Aishwarya only did 1 YRF film in the lead and zero Dharma films, despite having offers from them. That reiterates the fact that Ash was not here to do get an easy A, but wanted to experiment, challenge herself and become better at her craft.
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