Vidhu Vinod Chopra, one of the most successful filmmaker in Bollywood, has revealed that he was keen on casting Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for the role of Lalita in his 2005's musical film Parineeta. But it was director Pradeep Sarkar, who introduced actress Vidya Balan to him and she took away lots of laurels for her performance in the film.

The Bollywood filmmaker was talking about cast of Parineeta when her spoke about Aishwarya Rai. Vidhu Vinod Chopra told PTI, "When we thought of Parineeta, I immediately thought of a face like Aishwarya Rai. The character of the girl is like two men fall in love with her. So the heroine has to be bigger. But director Pradeep Sarkar told me about Vidya I was like let me see what she can do. But then we tested and tried her and she cleared it."

The critically acclaimed film Parineeta was an adaptation of 1914 Bengali novella of the same name, which was penned by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. The movie featured Saif Ali Khan and Sanjay Dutt along side Vidya Balan. Talking about other roles, Vidhu Chopra said, "I had called up Sanjay saying there is a role for you in my film and he agreed. We wanted the character of Girish (Sanjay) to be bigger than Shekar (Saif Ali Khan)."