Updated on Thursday, December 25, 2008, 00:00 IST

Spicezee Bureau

Mumbai, Dec 25: Against popular conception regarding Aishwarya Rai being nothing but just a gorgeous face, director Mani Ratnam is too impressed with Ash’s histrionics. The director has been bowled over by much more than just Mrs Bachchan pretty frame.

Working with the green-eyed lass for his next directorial venture tentatively titled ‘Raavan’, the director is all praises for his lead heroine. Besides her acting talents the director is much to impress with Ash’s impeccable dialogue pitch.

Apparently the flick is Ratnam’s bilingual project and will be made in Hindi and Tamil. What’s interesting is that Aishwarya will be dictating dialogues in the Tamil version too.

And that’s not all, Ratnam was so impressed by Ash’s Tamil enunciation that he has decided to retain some of her Tamil dialogues in the Hindi version of the film too.

A news daily even quoted a source as saying, “Though Aishwarya has done Tamil language movies (Iruvar, Jeans) it has been many years since she has spoken the language. Mani was definitely prepared that the shooting might go slow due to this, but Ash has pleasantly surprised everyone. She is so fluent with the language that shooting has been a cakewalk for her. Mani is shooting the Tamil and Hindi version simultaneously and the process is on at quite a rapid pace.”

Well, it seems Aishwarya is all beauty and some brains too.