Monday, 5/12/97 Child’s Play Milla Jovovich explains why her
starring role was like child’s play in the effects heavy
blockbuster "The 5th Element"
By Emily Forster Daily Bruin Senior Staff Acting is never easy,
but for a child, it can be downright awful. For Russian model and
actress Milla Jovovich ("Blue Lagoon," "Cuffs") going on casting
calls as a child was practically torture. "You get rejected so much
going on interviews," Jovovich says. "When I was a little girl, I
was going into this world where adults go ‘Uh-huh, thank you,
good-bye.’ There were a lot of times where I was coming home and
crying for hours because I could tell they didn’t like me. I was
asking my mother, ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? It
makes me feel horrible about myself.’" Nowadays, Jovovich does not
feel so horrible. She has a starring role in the Luc Besson
blockbuster, "The 5th Element," busily works to finish her music
album and continues with her successful modeling career. But
acting, her first love, remains a difficult pursuit despite her
current success. "You go through a lot of insecurity to get a
film," Jovovich says. "You just wanna work, you just wanna be on
set, you want to have a camera on you, you wanna work on your
craft. The only way to experience and to become better is to work.
Even from acting class, you’re never going to get better until you
get on set and work. I wasn’t a Jody Foster where I was a natural.
I need to work, I need to rehearse. That’s my talent. I need to
work on it. It’s there, but it doesn’t come without rehearsal. "I’m
21 now. I’m not 13 anymore, so I’m more picky about my projects.
I’m also making more money now as a model, so I can afford to say
no to a few projects that I’ve been offered. Especially after
making this movie, a lot of people are gonna offer me things just
on the hype of the movie. And I don’t want any of that. I’d rather
have people give me things after they see the film, based on
something substantial." Part of the hype surrounding "The 5th
Element’s" star is the rumors of the rigorous workouts she went
through. In order to prepare for her role as Leeloo, a perfect
human summoned by a future universe that needs her to protect the
cosmos from pending evil, she had quite a bit of working out to do.
"I had to do weight lifting, karate, gymnastic, theater groups,
ballet, lots of training," Jovovich says. "It put the pressure on
me to try and change my life a little bit because Leeloo is
everything I want to be. I’m not being superficial. She’s my idol.
She uses 100 percent of her brain. I wanted so much to be able to
get closer to what every human being has the potential for. They’re
doing studies on telepathy and opening your brain and the next step
in human evolution. And that’s what she represents to me – the next
step in human evolution." Playing a superior human being involved
more than just physical skill. Jovovich also needed to develop a
language for this flawless creature, which she did in conjunction
with French writer and director Besson. "It’s a language that Luc
has been working on since he was a teenager," Jovovich says. "He
gave me a dictionary and I had to memorize it. And then we kind of
worked together on what I felt were the best lines for me, what I
was comfortable saying. Of course we also had to use words that
made sense, but we made up new words too." The help Besson offered
Jovovich is something the actress feels necessary for her continual
training.. As an aspiring thespian, Jovovich is eager to take help
wherever she could find it. "I’m just the luckiest person in the
world to work with him because he’s really an actor’s director,"
Jovovich says. "He knows how to tap into human beings and he’s so
aware of human nature and habits. He’s just got such a brilliant
sense of humanity. That to me was so wonderful because he knew what
he wanted. "I’m still really young and I really want to work with
great people. I feel like I’ve got a long way to go before I reach
my full potential. I feel like I can do whatever I set my mind to,
but I still got a long, long way to go before I can work with
whomever and do a great job. As an actress I wanna be totally open
with the director since it’s their vision. They hired me to play
their part, especially with a person who wrote their script so I
could give them the vision they imagined." Although Jovovich was
prepared to help Besson achieve his vision, she was not quite ready
for the demands of her co-star, Bruce Willis ("Die Hard," "12
Monkeys"). "If he noticed I was having trouble with a scene, he’d
give me a little pep talk, or maybe he’d give me a slap on the face
to get my emotion there on the surface," Jovovich says. "But I
didn’t take it in the wrong way. It threw me off, because I
expected to look at Luc for advice, not to Bruce, but at the same
time, he was so professional about it. And after a scene, he’d
always come up to me to apologize if he felt he was a little
overbearing, and he’d just spell it out for me. He took care of me.
He looked out for me. He’s a very experienced actor, and I’m not. I
really needed all the help that I could get, especially working
with such brilliant people, it was like going to school every day."
The education she received was particularly important to Jovovich
because on other films, she found herself unprepared for the
rigorous world of a movie set. On the set of Sir Richard
Attenborough’s "Chaplin," for instance, Jovovich feels that as a
14-year-old, she suffered from a great unawareness. "It was
embarrassing," Jovovich says. "Sir Richard was interested in me to
do the part for a few years before he actually started working on
‘Chaplin.’ There was nudity in the picture and nobody told me about
it. I got put on spot on the set. And he was so sweet and like
‘Don’t worry, nobody’s looking.’ Sir Richard is very sweet, but it
wasn’t good." There are things that she regrets. But after playing
a character like Leeloo, Jovovich is confident that she can go back
to relishing life the way she did as a child. "The part of Leeloo
inspired me to stop getting so distracted by everything and trying
to see the magic and life more," says Jovovich. "I felt like I was
losing all my magic from disappointment or rejection or just stupid
teen-aged angst that made me do stupid things in my life. Every
time you do that as a young person you lose a little bit more of
your innocence and a little bit more of your magic. And suddenly
I’m given this opportunity to look at life again through the eyes
of a character like Leeloo, practically like a newborn, and to
really appreciate every second of life to its fullest. That’s
something that was so inspiring. It’s a life- long mission to even
come close to feeling like Leeloo." Part of becoming like Leeloo,
according to Jovovich, is experiencing emotions through her music.
As a guitar player, she finds the artistic expression through music
much more pure than that of acting. "The music is probably the most
important thing to me," Jovovich says. "With acting I need a
director, I need actors, I need to have someone to react from.
Sometimes you go into a casting and the casting director will go,
‘Okay, we will read the lines,’ and you’re supposed to be screaming
at her and she’s not giving you anything. So how do you scream at
somebody that’s not screaming at you? You have to react off people.
"But music isn’t like that – it’s something that’s really honest.
It’s so personal that I don’t need a director. I don’t need
anything. I doubt I’m going to have a producer on this album. It’s
really honest and it’s what I’m feeling, and that’s the most
important thing. People relate to honesty, whether they like the
music or not." The honesty of music has kept Jovovich’s attention
focused on songs from her childhood. As she struggled through the
adult world of acting and modeling, she found solace in the purity
of music. "The Fat Boys was the first album I ever bought. That
song ‘You Be Illin’,’ I thought that was the dopest thing in the
world. I was rocking out to that when I was like ten. When things
get crazy, it’s music that cools it down." Photos by Columbia
Pictures (top) Leeloo (played by Milla Jovovich) displays her
multi-pass ID card in "The Fifth Element." (left) The fierce
Mangalores from "The Fifth Element." (bottom) Special-effects
company Digital Domain created this shot of the city of Manhattan
in 2259 A.D., in which a police squadron flies between sprawling
skyscrapers.