Aishwarya Rai Bachchan: Bollywood Actress' Controversial Kiss in 'Dhoom 2' Led to Legal Threats, Left 'Most Beautiful Woman in the World' Uncomfortable [VIDEO]

The beautiful and talented Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan had her first onscreen kiss with actor Hrithik Roshan in the hit 2006 film "Dhoom 2." Now years later, the 39-year-old starlet (considered by some "the most beautiful woman in the world") admits that she still feels uncomfortable taking part in such intimate scenes. It doesn't help that after her mini-make out sesh with Roshan hit the big screen in 2006, Bachchan was met with much backlash and even received legal threats for her "inappropriate" public behavior. Bachchan initially had doubts signing up for "Dhoom 2" specifically because of the kissing scene, and much of India's media apparently agreed that the actress should have stepped away from such controversial a lip-lock.

During a recent interview, Bachchan openly admits - "I actually got a couple of notices, legal notices, from some people in the country turning around and saying 'You are iconic, you're an example to our girls you have led your life in such an exemplary manner, they're not comfortable with you doing this on screen so why did you?' And I was like, 'Wow, I'm just an actor, doing my job,' and here I am being asked to offer an explanation for a couple of seconds in a two, three hour piece of cinema."

Bachchan goes on to explain why she was initially hesitant to take on the "Dhoom 2" role, although she was very interested in the possibility of taking part in Western (modernized) cinema:

"It was around the same time that the interest in the western world from Hollywood, or European cinema, English cinema, from the industry there was a lot interest in me and the possibility of me working overseas, and I had already declined a couple of scripts purely on the basis of not being comfortable with the very physical scenes and the kissing because I'd never done that on screen and I just wasn't very comfortable with the idea. And I was quite sure even my audience was not very comfortable with me doing it on-screen. I was actually quite convinced about it but I still said okay, if I have to go down this path let me first do it in our cinema, in an Indian piece of cinema, and let me see if all my doubts are true, and they were."

Although onscreen kissing is finally becoming more acceptable in India's rather conservative film culture, Bachchan believes it still may be awhile before "making out" becomes an onscreen norm:

"A lot of actors have kissed before that movie, they continue to kiss on screen till this very minute, but public display is not that common in Indian culture. Even our actors, it's very rare that actors look comfortable in our cinema on screen kissing... It almost looks like it's a planned moment, just to make much ado about a moment or to excite the audience. It's made into this separate entity from a scene, it's not very comfortable in our screenplay."

Watch the controversial 2006 "Dhoom 2" onscreen lip-lock here: