Aish boosted Vikram's confidence

Vikram, a superstar from South steped into Bollywood with Mani Ratnam's flick Raavan, playing the lead role in the Hindi version and the villain in the Tamil version of the film. Vikram openly admits to being scared in the start to be part of the Hindi version of director Mani Ratnam's Raavan but his co-star Aishwarya Rai's outstanding performance in the Tamil version boosted Vikram's confidence.


Vikram is the first actor who is doing a film in two different languages and playing two different characters at the same time. In the Hindi version he will play Aishwarya's husband while in Tamil he will donn a negative character.

It is said that the movie is not Ramayana. A co-production of Madras Talkies and Reliance Big Pictures, Raavan is salted for release on June 18, 2010.

Aishwarya-Vikram Bravado

Mani Ratnam, one of the brilliant filmmakers in India, is almost ready with his most awaited movie Raavana featuring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan . According to the sources Mani Ratnam wanted stunt director Shyam Kaushal to shoot an action sequence where a petrol bomb blasts.

The scene was being shot with Aishwarya Rai and south Indian actor Vikram.

It was a difficult task to execute as the filmmaker wanted the bomb to blast midair, a few feet away from Vikram.

Actually, Mani himself had been in a similar situation when his film Bombay had released and a bomb had blasted midair and he was saved by just a few seconds in 1995.

Aishwairya elated with South films

Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai is elated over bagging the main leads in two mega south Indian projects - Mani Ratnam's Ravan and Shankar's Endhiran. She is finally working with Mani Ratnam after a long gap of 10 years. "Shankar had approached me previously to work with him, but it never materialized. Finally, everything landed in place and here we are working together after 10 years," said Aishwarya on the sets of Ravan.



Tamil superstar Rajinikant, who is playing the male lead in Endhiran, was also very keen to work with Aishwarya and had tried to sign her for his earlier ventures - Padaiyappa and Chandramukhi, but the actress could not spare the dates.

Speaking about Ratnam's Ravan, in which she once again teams up with her husband Abhishek Bachchan and is elated over working with Mani as she considers him a perfect film-maker, Ash said following. While shooting for Ravan in the jungles of Kerala, the entire cast and crew had a scary experience when an elephant ran amok and killed 51-year-old mahout, Andavan.The actors including Abhishek, Aishwarya, Vikram, Prabhu and Munna had to take shelter in a guest house.

After 12 hours of tension and waiting, the crew returned to their hotel. Now the cast and crew of Ravan have moved to Ooty where the remaining portions of the film will be shot.