Beauty plus any other skill is a constant, even in Bollywood

In IIT we used to have a not-very-original saying "Beauty plus brains is a constant". I'll admit it's quite sexist and very un-PC, but there is a lot of truth behind that saying. Women who are good looking rarely have to work hard. (I can write a big piece on why that is so, but I don't think anyone will disagree with my observation.)
Another field where that saying comes into play is acting. Especially in India. We have our A-list "actresses" - Kareena, Katrina, Priyanka, Aishwarya. And then we have our serious actresses - Nandita Das, Tabu, Konkana Sen Sharma, Chitrangada Singh. No one will accuse the A-listers of being serious actresses, nor the serious actresses of being very good looking. Sure we have people who swear by the looks of Nandita Das and Tabu but come on, if people thought they were that good looking, we'd be seeing more posters of them. And when people say Priyanka Chopra did a good job of acting in a movie, they mean that she didn't trip and fall or forget her lines. Atleast, in the final edit of the movie.
One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is the Sen Sisters - Riya and Raima. Riya Sen is a stunningly beautiful woman, but I wouldn't trust her to remember a single line of dialogue without two prompters. Her sister, Raima, on the other hand is a homely lass who appears in a lot of arthouse fare and is generally considered a good actress. And I know from an interview that Riya always used to get attention when the two sisters went out together. So she had to know that she didn't have to work hard to get attention or success in life.
It's pretty obvious that the only reason any of the A-listers or Riya Sen are in movies is because of their looks and not because of their acting abilities. No one ever took any auditions of their performances before picking them for a role. But people in the other group have to be good at acting, otherwise no one would let them in front of a camera. (Again, I want to go off on tirade about the hollow Bollywood machine and its meaningless existance, but I'll hold off on that uplifting piece till later.)