Milla Jovovich is our favorite sci-fi actress. More than any other major actress, Milla has specialized in science fiction films. Her sci-fi oeuvre includes The Fifth Element (1997), Ultraviolet (2006), and the Resident Evil franchise. VH1 dubbed to her the "reigning queen of kick-butt."

Jovovich was born Milica Natasha Jovovich in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, on December 17, 1975, the daughter of Bogdan Bogdanovich Jovovich, a Serbian pediatrician, and Galina Loginova, a Russian stage actress. In 1981, when Milla was five years old, her family left the Soviet Union for political reasons and moved to London. They subsequently lived in Sacramento, California before settling in Los Angeles seven months later; Jovovich's parents divorced soon after. Jovovich attended public schools shortly after arriving in the United States, and learned fluent English in three months.

Jovovich began her career as a model at age eleven, when photographer Richard Avedon featured her in Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women in the World" advertisements. Avedon was head of marketing at Revlon at the time, and chose Jovovich to appear with models Alexa Singer and Sandra Zatezalo as the Most Unforgettable Women in the World. In 1987, photographers Gene Lemuel and Peter Duke took Polaroid's of the twelve year old Jovovich, and Lemuel later showed the photographs to Herb Ritts (this was in the Stone Age when they didn't have digital cameras; a Polaroid had self-developing film). Impressed, Ritts re-shot the Polaroid's for the October 1987 cover of the Italian fashion magazine Lei; this was the first of her many cover shoots. Jovovich was among other models who gained controversy for becoming involved in the industry at a young age.

Later Jovovich made it to the cover of The Face, which led to new contracts and covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Since then, she has graced over a hundred magazine covers, including Seventeen, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, and InStyle. Her modeling career has included various campaigns for Banana Republic, Christian Dior, Damiani, Donna Karan, Gap, Versace, Calvin Klein, DKNY, Coach, Giorgio Armani, H&M, and Revlon. Since 1998, Jovovich has been an "international spokesmodel" for L'Oréal cosmetics. In 2004, Jovovich topped Forbes magazine's "Richest Supermodels of the World" list, earning a reported $10.5 million

Milla's mother enrolled Jovovich in the Professional Actors school in California at the age of nine. In 1988, she had her first professional acting role in the television film The Night Train to Kathmandu, and later that year she appeared in her first feature film, Two Moon Junction. Following more small television appearances like the "Fair Exchange" (1989) and a 1989 role as a French girl (she was 14 at the time then) on a Married with Children episode, she gained fame with the romance film Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), the sequel to The Blue Lagoon, only this time with a happy ending. She appeared in 1993's Dazed and Confused alongside Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey.

Milla's breakthrough starring role in motion pictures came in Luc Besson's science fiction thriller, The Fifth Element (1997) opposite Bruce Willis, in which she portrays the "perfect being" who holds the key to preventing evil from destroying the world. Besson married Jovovich in 1997; they divorced in 1999.

Jovovich next played the role of a prostitute in Spike Lee's He Got Game (1998) with Denzel Washington. Next, Milla played Joan of Arc Besson's The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999).

She next appeared with Mel Gibson in Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel (2000). She went on to co-star with Wes Bentley and Sarah Polley in The Claim (2000) and in Ben Stiller's spoof of the modeling world, Zoolander (2001). In 2002, she starred in the romantic comedy You Stupid Man.

Milla achieved box office success in the U.S. and around the world with the action-packed thriller, Resident Evil (2002), based on the popular video game of the same name. It was written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who became Milla's third husband in 2009. Milla reprised her role as the zombie slaying heroine, Alice, in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) and again in Resident Evil: Extinction (2007). The fourth installment, Resident Evil: Afterlife is due out in 2011.

In 2003, Milla received critical acclaim for her role as an aspiring punk rock singer opposite Oscar-winner Adrien Brody and Illeana Douglas in Dummy, a comedy about a ventriloquest and his dummy. Also in 2003, Milla starred in the crime thriller No Good Deed opposite Samuel L. Jackson.

In the spring of 2006, Milla played another sci-fi action heroine in the futuristic film UltraViolet directed by Kurt Wimmer. She also starred as the manipulative Kat in the movie .45, in which she uses her beauty to seduce her friends into framing her abusive boyfriend for murder. In 2009, she starred in two films, the suspense film A Perfect Getaway and the sci-fi thriller, The Fourth Kind, dealing with alien abductions (think Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind).

In addition to her modeling and acting career, Jovovich released a critically acclaimed musical album, The Divine Comedy in 1994. She continues to release demos for other songs on her official website and contributes to film soundtracks as well.

-- 15 Dec 09