Abhishek Bachchan recalls first meeting Aishwarya Rai in Switzerland in 1995: 'She didn't understand my accent'
Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai first met in 1995 in Switzerland, not on a film set. Years later, love blossomed during Guru, leading to their engagement in January 2007 and marriage in April.
Last Updated: 02.08 PM, Jul 05, 2025
Few fans know that Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan met by coincidence a long time before they became one of the most famous couples in Bollywood. Their first meeting occurred in 1995, long before Abhishek entered the film industry. This information contradicts the prevalent idea that they met on the sets of Dhai Akshar Prem Ke in the early 2000s.
Abhishek Bachchan revisits the memory
Nayandeep Rakshit's YouTube channel included an open conversation in which Abhishek recalled their first meeting in Switzerland. The film Mrityudata, starring his father, Amitabh Bachchan, was being shot overseas when he was an assistant on the set. The actor explained, "I was on a recce for my father’s film Mrityudata, with Mr. Mehul Kumar in Switzerland. I was sent by my mother because I had grown up there, and I had studied in boarding school there, so they felt I might know the locales better."
Abhishek visited the set of Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya, which starred Bobby Deol and Aishwarya Rai—the reigning Miss World—during this trip. He continued by saying, "I was very friendly with Bobby (Deol); he was shooting for Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya, and the day we were on the recce, we came onto his set to say hello, and he was shooting with Aishwarya. It was the first time I saw her in person. I mean, we had already seen her during Miss World and all that."
They continued chatting over a laid-back meal that night. Abhishek recounted, "That evening Bobby said, 'Why don’t you come to my hotel and we’ll have dinner together?' And I knew Mickey Contractor very well; he was doing her makeup and had done my mother’s makeup as well. He had seen me as a kid. So we were all sitting together, and that’s when I first met her."
First impression
When he reflected on Aishwarya's initial impression of him, he couldn't help but giggle. According to him, his strong accent made it so that she couldn't comprehend a word he said.
Even though the first meeting didn't immediately ignite a relationship, it planted the seeds. Several years down the road, while filming Mani Ratnam's Guru, Abhishek proposed to Aishwarya using the exact prop ring she wore throughout the film. They became engaged in January 2007 and were married in April of that year.