Hardly guilty of resting on her laurels and relying on good genetics to carry her through her showbiz career, Milla Jovovich isn't afraid of taking a risk. In fact this artist - who leaps rather than "crosses over" from job to job - was risqué from the word go.
Before she was old enough to drive, the Ukrainian-born knockout was making waves as an international cover girl, appearing in practically every prestigious fashion magazine around the globe. Milla was 11 years old when her face was plastered across the cover of Mademoiselle, causing an outcry from conservative groups claiming that the child was too young to be depicted as a sex object. But Milla didn't let a few disapproving ninnies get in her way. Instead, she used the publicity to boost her career to new heights.
As competitive, controversial, cutthroat and exciting as the fashion world is, Milla quickly sought new challenges. She made her feature film debut in 1988's Two Moon Junction and, between fashion spreads, appeared in Return to Blue Lagoon, Kuffs, Chaplin, and the cult stoner hit Dazed and Confused.
In 1994, Milla jumped into yet another performance discipline: music. She released The Divine Comedy, a folky, funky album that allowed the model/actress to add yet another title to her impressive and continually expanding resume: songstress. Critics, who normally lambaste anyone who displays such an enormous amount of drive - especially models - were too breathless to offer any significant or particularly cruel criticism. Milla, it seemed, moved too fast for them.
Although one could argue that playing the "perfect" human being is hardly a stretch for Ms. Jovovich, the performance that Milla delivered as Leeloo in Luc Besson's visually appealing The Fifth Element proved that she wasn't just a pretty face. Besson must have thought so too: after downplaying rumors attesting to his and Milla's steamy love affair during filming, the director married the stunning starlet. Once again, Milla made headlines not because of her age, but Besson's: he was two times older than the Eastern European beauty.
Despite the couple's obvious chemistry, the marriage lasted only two years. Milla's career, on the other hand, continued to skyrocket. In 1998, she turned in a difficult performance as the hooker Dakota Burns in Spike Lee's He Got Game. The following year Besson cast her as a real-life heroine in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
Milla still shows up at the odd fashion shoot, to "pay the rent" as she puts it, and support her other arts-related endeavors. She has often been quoted as saying she would hate to have to do a bad movie or record a terrible album because she has expenses to pay, and sees modeling as a means to achieving her deeper, more artistic goals. Ironically, Milla's next return to the big screen will be as the flamboyant and conniving Katinka the modeling agent in Ben Stiller's upcoming satire on the fashion industry, Zoolander. Drawing from experience? Maybe so. But it's difficult to imagine that this grounded, driven and under 30 Renaissance woman was ever too naïve to know what it's all about.
-- Carolyn Heinze 
