Biography
An exotic beauty with high cheekbones, striking blue eyes and a saucy demeanor, Milla Jovovich started modeling as a child. By the time she was 12, she was photographed by Richard Avedon as one of Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women in the World". The Kiev-born Jovovich segued to the big screen in the campy "Two-Moon Junction" (1988) and landed her first starring role as the turn-of-the-century young woman stranded on a South Seas island in "Return to the Blue Lagoon" (1991), the sequel to the 1980 Brooke Shields-Christopher Atkins box-office hit, "The Blue Lagoon". After being wasted as Christian Slater's girlfriend in "Kuffs" and as Mildred Harris in Richard Attenborough's biopic "Chaplin" (both 1992), the actress found that most of her role in Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" (1993) ended on the cutting room floor. Discouraged, she briefly retired from acting to concentrate on her fledgling singing career.
In 1997, she returned to the big screen co-starring with Bruce Willis in the sci-fi thriller "The Fifth Element", directed by future husband Luc Besson. Two years later, before the marriage floundered, Jovovich played the Maid of Orleans for Besson in "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc", which failed to impress audiences or critics. Her performance as a whorehouse madam in 1880s California in "The Claim" (2000) also divided viewers, but she showed her game side when she sent up Eurotrash models as Katinka Ingabogovinanana in the Ben Stiller comedy "Zoolander" (2001). More obtuse was her turn in the indie "Dummy" (2002) playing a suburban punk rock chick and neighbor to an eccentric young man (Adrien Brody) who can only expresses his inner insecurities through his ventriloquist dummy.
Changing gears to more commercial minded fare, Jovovich became the big screen version of the video game heroine Alice for "Resident Evil" (2002), an action-horror-thriller that, despite critical drubbing, proved to be a box office success, allowing the actress to show her butt-kicking side, along with a titilating amount of skin (She also commenced a romance with writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson that led to an engagement). She would next appear in Bob Rafelson's little-seen noir wannabe "The House on Turk Street" (2002) opposite Samuel L. Jackson and the minor indie romantic comedy "You Stupid Man" (2002) before returning for the 2004 sequel "Resident Evil: Apocalypse." |
