Milla Jovovich

Milla Jovovich is an American actress, model, musician, and producer whose four-decade career has produced multiple defining American film roles — particularly her six-film tenure as Alice across Paul W. S. Anderson's Resident Evil film franchise (2002–2016). She was born Milica Bogdanovna Jovović on December 17, 1975, in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR (modern Ukraine). Her father Bogić Jovović was a Serbian Yugoslav physician and her mother Galina Loginova was a Russian Soviet actress. The family emigrated from Soviet Ukraine to London in 1980 and subsequently relocated to Los Angeles in 1981.

Her 1985 first feature-film appearance — at age nine — in the made-for-TV movie The Night Train to Kathmandu launched her early-career American film career. Her 1988 first major model contract — at age 12 — for Revlon's "The Most Unforgettable Women in the World" advertising campaign launched her early-1990s international high-fashion modeling career. Her 1991 first international Vogue magazine cover (the November 1991 American Vogue cover) produced her early-1990s international modeling commercial peak.

Her 1997 first major-budget feature-film lead role as Leeloo in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element — opposite Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman — launched her late-1990s American science-fiction-genre film public profile. The 1997 marriage to Luc Besson (her second marriage) was short-lived (divorced 1999), but it shaped her late-1990s and early-2000s American action-and-science-fiction-genre film career.

Her 2002 lead role as amnesiac former Umbrella Corporation security operative Alice in Paul W. S. Anderson's Resident Evil — the Capcom video-game adaptation — launched the six-film 2002–2016 Resident Evil franchise. The franchise produced six films across 2002, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2016, and grossed approximately $1.2 billion worldwide. She married Paul W. S. Anderson (her Resident Evil director) in 2009, and the couple has three daughters. Her subsequent 2010s and 2020s film career has produced multiple American action-and-science-fiction-genre films — particularly The Three Musketeers (2011), The Rookies (2019), and the 2020 Capcom video-game adaptation Monster Hunter.

Her name Milla began as her personally-modified spelling of Milica (the Serbian feminine form of Mileva, from the Slavic root meaning "gracious" or "lovely"). Milla has been climbing in American naming since the 2000s.