The year 1994 was the year that was all about the two beauties – Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen – placing India on the world map. The divas had won Miss World and Miss Universe respectively. Prior to that, Sushmita had also defeated Aishwarya at the Miss India round. And ever since then, the two have always made to appear as competition to each-other.
In an old video by wildfilmsindia, Sushmita Sen had spoken at length about being pitted against Aishwarya Rai and vice-versa. "We never had enough time to be enemies, rivals or friends. We were always people who knew each-other from a distance, we minded our own business. We were not the best-of-friends saying 'you first', 'please you first'. We always wanted to be the best in our own way, which we have proven to be. I went ahead an won Ms Universe, she went ahead and won Ms World. Neither of us were a second to anybody, we did our jobs and we did it well."
Sushmita goes on to elaborate
"And that is one thing which I think people should keep in the back of their heads. We have rivalry for our own work saying, 'hey, I am doing this and I must be good at this.' You only compare people one against another when both are perfect. None of us are perfect, we both have started new career, we both have to work really hard to make a place for ourselves before we can start comparing. So there is no such thing as rivalry. People will still write about it, people will still talk about it. I think because that is something that interests them very much. But the sad thing is, there will be a day when after all this being said and done, Aishwarya and I will have the last laugh," she further added.
How modeling helped
Talking about the advantages of being a model and then opting for acting, Sen had said that modelling would definitely come as a big help. "For a model to be an actress, the model has already faced the public, the model has already been on a ramp. The model has already faced reactions of people live, she is been in front of the camera for commercials. She is definitely had all kinds of experience which adds up later," Sen had reasoned.
