Actress Aishwarya Rai turned on her feminine charm on American television audiences here, playing the coy and the coquette at once in a 20-minute profile.

Aishwarya, 30, was interviewed on CBS News' highly respected show "60 Minutes" Sunday night, which recorded the fact that she has been described as the world's most beautiful woman.

Known for its probing and often unsettling line of questioning, the show's correspondent, Bob Simon, appeared to go soft on a resplendent Aishwarya.

To a question whether men were intimidated by her beauty, Aishwarya countered by asking Simon if he was intimidated. Simon seemed to be searching for words even as the actress butted in saying, "You are blushing".

"Guilty as charged," he said lamely, when the actress giggled and asked him if he was blushing.

The show spoke of 17,000 websites that are devoted to Aishwarya and how she has now emerged as one of India's most influential personalities worldwide.

Speaking in an accent that rested uncomfortably between being British and American, Aishwarya tackled questions about whether she would kiss in a Hollywood film, how Indians do not express physical love openly and whether she has a boyfriend.

"I'd assume that's really a reflection of our society," she said, when asked to explain the Hindi movies' sense of modesty.

"Of course people kiss and of course people have a very healthy love life. This is the land of the Kama Sutra. But, nevertheless, in our society you don't really see people around the street corner kissing or being extremely, overtly, physically demonstrative publicly. They do it privately but not publicly."

"We'll cross the bridge when we reach it," Aishwarya said to the inevitable question what she would do when a Hollywood director said "kiss him."

"But yeah. We - let's see. We'll work on the story, work on the scene. I'll work on the part and, and let's see," she said.

"Unlike some of her Hollywood counterparts, Aishwarya is very much like the women she portrays: wholesome, dutiful and deeply religious. So much so, she insisted we visit her favourite temple for this interview. It's more than 200 years old and every week more than 100,000 people come from all over India to make offerings and pray to Lord Ganesh, the half-elephant/half-man Hindu god of happiness.

"At the temple, she started attracting more worshippers than Lord Ganesh. She says being treated as sort of a goddess in this way, 'makes me feel guilty. I'll be very honest. When there's a distraction at the place of worship I kinda get a bit guilty. And I kind of say, 'Lord, forgive me. This isn't intended.'" Simon said.

On whether she has a boyfriend, Rai put her best innocent smile and then brought in an expression of intrigue without really saying much.