Abhi- Aish play the dutiful Indian citizen, rushes back from Cannes to cast their votes

MUMBAI - Bollywood superstars Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai rushed back to Mumbai after attending the opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival as they wanted to be home in time to hear the election results.

The couple even skipped a big Bollywood party held by the Committee Of Indian Industries hosted by flamboyant industrialist Vijay Mallya Saturday night at Cannes.

‘It’s a crucial election for us. And we wanted to be here when the results came in,’ said Abhishek.

The Bachchan family - Amitabh, Jaya, Abhishek and Aishwarya - had made it a point to cast their vote in the elections held in Mumbai April 30.

The rest of Bollywood’s who’s who that attended Cannes stayed back.

On Friday night, actress Tannishtha Chatterjee of ‘Brick Lane’ fame, who is at Cannes to introduce her film ‘Road, Movie’ directed by Dev Benegal, attended the premiere of Australian writer-director Jane Campion’s ‘Bright Star’.

And the Indian actress was delighted to meet Campion.

‘I’m a big fan of all her works, specially ‘The Piano’. To my delight she had seen my film ‘Brick Lane’ and liked it. The night before ‘Bright Star’ I attended the premiere of the other big film ‘Fish Tank’, which is one of the hottest films this year in the competition section. Coincidentally, I had presented the best actor award to the ‘Fish Tank’ hero Michael Fassbiner at Cannes last year,’ said Tannishtha.