As her name gained popularity overseas, she was chosen by Time magazine in 2004 as one of the World's "100 Most Influential People",[11] and appeared on the cover of Time magazine, Asia Edition (TIMEasia) in 2003.[12] She was the subject of a 60 Minutes profile on 2 January. A month later she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman. She was also featured on Oprah's "Women Across the Globe" segment. In 2003, she acted in the critically acclaimed and commercial successful Bengali film, Chokher Bali, an adaptation of one of Rabindranath Tagore's novels by the same name.[13]
Rai has been a regular at the
Cannes Film Festival since 2002, and was a member of the Jury at Cannes
in the year 2003. In October 2004, a wax figure of Rai was put on
display in London's Madame Tussaud's
wax museum.[14]
The same month, her first foreign film, Bride and Prejudice
released. The film was an Indian version of Jane Austen's classic novel
Pride and Prejudice. Her next overseas venture was The Mistress of
Spices. She then appeared at the closing ceremony of the 2006
Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, as part of a performance showcasing
Indian art, on behalf of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, to be held in New
Delhi. In between her overseas acting stints, she appeared in the
Indian film Bunty Aur Babli in a hugely popular
seven minute dance sequence for the song "Kajra Re".
