Filed at 9:14 a.m. ET
MUMBAI, India (AP) -- They are not your typical movie stars.
Ten-year-old Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail lives in a lean-to made of tarpaulins
and blankets. Nine-year-old Rubina Ali's home is a tiny bubble-gum pink shack. A
murky open sewer runs down her narrow lane.
Plucked from one of Mumbai's teeming slums to star in the Oscar-nominated hit
''Slumdog Millionaire,'' they are India's real slumdog millionaires.
Like the film's hero, an impoverished tea seller who wins money and love on
India's version of ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,'' they now have a chance to
escape the grinding poverty they were born into. But as their still-unfolding
story shows, things never go as smoothly in real life.
The filmmakers are helping the children, but fast discovering that good
intentions and deep pockets don't guarantee success. Meanwhile, sudden fame and
relative fortune are sowing resentment within the families and with neighbors,
who wonder why their big-eyed boys weren't cast instead.
The Fox Searchlight release has grossed more than $100 million, but the
children's lives seem nearly as fragile as before.
''He's supposed to be the hero in the movie, but look how he's living,'' said
Azharuddin's mother, Shameem Ismail, sitting on a rotting board outside their
lean-to. ''It's a zero.''
About 65 million Indians, roughly a quarter of the urban population, live in
slums, according to government surveys.
''Most of them are doomed to remain as they are,'' said Amitabh Kundu, dean
of Jawaharlal Nehru University's School of Social Sciences in New Delhi.
It's too early to tell whether Rubina and Azharuddin -- Azhar to his friends
-- will buck the trend.
The filmmakers debated whether to use slum kids at all.
''Part of your brain thinks, would it distort their lives too much?'' said Danny
Boyle, the British director, by phone from London. ''Then someone said,
'These people have so much prejudice against them in their lives. Why should we
be prejudiced against them as well?'''
Rubina was cast as the young Latika, who grows up to become the hero's love
interest, and Azhar as his brother, Salim.
Boyle and producer Christian Colson figured education was the best way to
help Rubina and Azhar. They got them places in Aseema, a nonprofit,
English-language school for underprivileged kids in Mumbai.
Some arrive at Aseema with matted hair, never having seen a mirror before.
Many need counseling. On one blackboard, the lesson of the day read: ''I must
close my mouth when I eat.''
School chairwoman Dilbur Parakh said half make it through high school, and
she tries to find vocational training for the rest.
The filmmakers also paid the children for 30 days of acting work, give the
families a small monthly stipend and set up trust funds that Rubina and Azhar
can tap once they graduate.
Colson describes the amount in the trust as substantial, but won't tell
anyone how much -- not even the parents -- for fear of making the kids
vulnerable to exploitation.
As the movie's popularity swelled, the filmmakers' plan began to fray.
Journalists swarmed the school, forcing Rubina and Azhar to stay home. The
families started demanding more, asking for cash and new houses, Colson
said.
When the city razed Azhar's neighborhood, Colson wired the family money for a
new home. He doesn't know what happened to the money, but the family remains
camped out in a lean-to.
Most troubling, he said, the parents' commitment to seeing their kids through
school has waned.
So the filmmakers have agreed to buy apartments and allow the families to
move in. But they won't transfer ownership to the parents until Rubina and Azhar
finish school at age 18.
The filmmakers have also faced criticism that they didn't fairly compensate
the children, but have declined to reveal how much they paid, again citing fear
of exploitation.
''It's becoming a full-time job dealing with the daily hassle,'' Boyle said.
Still, he added, ''I'm glad we did it, even with all the headache.''
He hopes to give Rubina and Azhar an education rather than a jackpot -- what
he called a ''slow nurturing'' instead of ''a sudden dash for glory.''
''Moviemaking is distorting,'' Boyle said. ''The last thing you want to do is
turn them into a star.''
But directing movies is easier than directing lives. Stardom is already
distorting Rubina's world.
The latest additions to her family's meager belongings -- some
stainless-steel pots and old blankets -- are two small photo albums.
Inside are photographs of Rubina wearing a glittering ''salwar kameez''
outfit and sitting in a helicopter, ready to fly off to a strange new world of
red carpets and Bollywood heroes.
''My friends when they see me on TV say, 'Look, you're going to be a big
actress when you grow up. You're going to forget us,''' Rubina said. ''I say,
'You are my best friends. How can I forget you?'''
She dashed outside and scurried along the sewer. ''See this?'' she said,
pointing at a tract of weeds. She seemed proud to pronounce a new English word
to a foreign visitor: ''jungle.''
But on the narrow, dirty lanes Rubina knows best, most kids speak Hindi and
Urdu and forgo school to work.
''If I wear something nice then people say how I'm trying to show off, and I
normally don't talk to them in English,'' she said.
Azhar's mom, wrapped in the sparkly pink sari she wore to the movie opening,
wonders where all the money the filmmakers promised is.
''I don't know if I should go ask them if money is coming in,'' she said.
Her husband usually brings in 1,500 to 3,000 rupees ($30 to $60) a month
selling scrap wood, but now is hospitalized with tuberculosis, Ismail said.
Azhar sat at her elbow, distracted. His friends had been staring at him as he
talked with one journalist after another.
''My friends have seen me get new clothes and go in cars and get books,'' he
said. ''Even they want that sort of life.''
He celebrated his birthday recently by buying a cake and balloons for his
neighbors.
Now he wanted to buy his friends chocolate, but his mother controlled the
purse strings.
Azhar began to cry. Tears ran down his small face.
''It's my money and you are using it!'' he shouted.
''We have 200 rupees,'' his mother said. ''I'll give you some later.''
He kept crying, twisting his body in small unhappy thrusts. ''You're not
giving me money,'' he yelled. ''You're spending it on other things.''
His mother grabbed a piece of brick and raised it over her head.
''Is it your money?'' he shouted, daring her: ''Hit me. You hit me!''
Then he fled.
Suddenly, school, Bollywood and the upcoming Oscars all seemed terribly
irrelevant. There was only the plain dirt Azhar and his mother live on, and the
immediate, unruly desire for cash.
Ismail tossed the brick to the ground, rolling her one good eye in
exasperation. She can't see out the other one and says she needs 6,000 rupees
($120) for an operation.
''He's a star,'' she sighed.
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