Milla Jovovich Biography

Milla Jovovich (Serbian: Милица Јововић (Milica Jovović) Russian: Милица Йовович, born December 17, 1975), is an actress, musician, and model. Her last name is pronounced /ˈjovoviʧ/. She currently lives and works in the United States.

Jovovich was born Milica Jovović in Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) to a Serbian doctor Bogić Jovović and Ukrainian actress mother Galina Loginova Jovović. Her family is Montenegrin in origin, their estate being at Metohija in Zlopek near Peć. Her great-grandfather Bogić Camić Jovović was flag-bearer of the Vasojevići tribe, and officer of the guard of the King Nicholas I of Montenegro; his wife's name was also Militza. Her grandfather Bogdan Jovović was a commander in the Pristina military area, and later investigated finances in military areas of Skopje and Sarajevo, where he uncovered massive gold embezzlement. He was punished for refusing to convict his friend for the crime. Later, the communist government imprisoned him on Goli Otok. When he feared that he could be arrested again, he escaped to Albania and later came to the Soviet Union, in Kiev. Another version of the story claims that he actually was the one to have taken the gold. Milla's father, Bogić Jovović, later joined her grandfather in Kiev, where he and his sister graduated in medicine.

The family later moved to London, and then in 1981 to Sacramento, California when Milla was five years old. Seven months later they settled in Los Angeles, California.

Jovovich has done extensive modeling since she was eleven years old. She is multilingual and speaks Serbian, Russian, French and English fluently. During her pre-acting period, she collaborated with a young lawyer [Isabelle], for a first music CD.

Jovovich became an actress in the late 1980s as a teenager, and gained popularity through her appearance in Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991) which led to inevitable comparisons between her and another child model-turned-actress, Brooke Shields (who had starred in the original Blue Lagoon eleven years earlier). Most of her early appearances were in supporting or cameo roles.

Jovovich married Shawn Andrews in October of 1992 during the filming of Dazed and Confused; the marriage was annulled a month later. She later married The Fifth Element director Luc Besson in 1997. They divorced in 1999. She was briefly engaged to writer/director Paul W. S. Anderson (Resident Evil) in 2003.

By the late 1990s she was receiving top billing and entered the world of action heroes with her performances in The Fifth Element and in two popular movies based upon the survival horror series, Resident Evil (she has reportedly signed for two more films in this series for release in 2006 and 2007).

In 1994, Jovovich, billed under her first name, Milla, released her critically acclaimed first musical album, The Divine Comedy. Featuring many original songs, the album led to comparisons with Tori Amos and Kate Bush. Though she began to concentrate more on her acting than her musical career, her vocals appeared on the 2004 album Legion of Boom by The Crystal Method .