MILLA JOVOVICH’s cool allure has kept the model and actor in the spotlight for 26 years. She talks to KATIE MULLOY about borrowing from the boys, being happy in her own skin, and why she’ll never worry about her weight.
It’s a quiet, sunny Sunday in Paris’ seventh arrondissement, and as Milla Jovovich wraps up her photo shoot for The Edit she has a request: "Can I get some American Spirits – yellow or blue – and either Amstel or 1664 beers?" Retreating into the kitchen to enjoy both, she shrugs, "Sometimes you just need to decompress over some smokes and beers." This is Jovovich’s way: cool and easy-going. She is jetlagged and due to take another offensively early flight tomorrow morning, but that doesn’t stop her going to the fridge for a final beer.
In character alone she is the ideal muse for this week’s Big Easy issue – laid-back, insouciant, sexy. Off-set, her style, which she says is currently going through somewhat of an evolution, also matches up. "I had to go shopping recently. I’d put on this top – it’s silky with a Hawaiian print – totally cheesy and amazing. A year ago, I loved it. But I looked at myself in the mirror and I’m like, ‘Who do I think I am? I have no idea who this person is looking back at me.’” So now, she’s rediscovering herself, via designers such as Isabel Marant and Saint Laurent. "I love the sexy, boyish thing. I’m friends with Hedi Slimane and I got hooked up with all these clothes from the men’s collection. Harry Brant [the son of model Stephanie Seymour and industrialist Peter Brant] and I were sitting next to each other at the show and fighting over the clothes. I was like, ‘See that blazer Harry? That’s mine.’”
The style reassessment may be partly to do with dressing a body that has changed over the last year. “Last summer, I was definitely 15lb lighter. I’d done a Vogue Paris cover at the end of 2012, so I’d been to the gym and I was on a liquid diet. I lost the weight but, to be honest, when I looked at pictures of myself – not in a magazine, in real life – I felt I looked older. I looked great in clothes but my face was...” Here, she sucks in her cheeks and purses her lips.
Jovovich is, as you hope she’d be, resolutely c’est la vie about the extra weight. "I always notice guys are more attentive when you have a little weight on you. My husband always loves it. [He says]: ‘Your boobs! Your **** looks amazing!’”
The nonchalance is twofold. Firstly, she is – at the risk of stating the obvious – still entirely stunning at 37. But also, given that Jovovich has had a career spanning 26 of those years, she discovered some time ago that there was far more to longevity than looks alone. "Physically, I peaked at 23," she insists. I involuntarily arch an eyebrow. "Listen, I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m very happy with the way I look; I look great for my age. But for me, when I was 23, I personally felt like no one could touch me." She cocks her head and smiles. "Well, maybe Kate Moss."
Her point is that people lose interest in just a pretty face – you need to give them something else to love if you want to be in it for the long game. And, clearly, Jovovich knows about the long game. She has starred in more campaigns than it is decent to mention, including the likes of Dior, Versace, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein. She has maintained her role as L’Oréal ambassador for the last 15 years. And acting-wise, she has managed to carve out a niche super-status as a butt-kicking, sci-fi action queen, largely thanks to the unwavering devotees of her Resident Evil franchise. "It’s who you are when nobody is watching you that matters," Jovovich says of her long-term appeal. "You’ve got to have something else to bring to the table."
It was a lesson drummed into her by her mother, Galina, who was a movie star in her native Russia until she and Milla’s Serbian doctor father, Bogić, left the Soviet Union in 1982 when Milla was five. They would eventually arrive in California with nothing. "They were at ground zero; they were housekeepers," says Jovovich. "I saw my mum crying a lot."
Galina steered Jovovich’s course with vigor, ensuring what little money they had was ploughed into dance and drama lessons and books like Richard Avedon’s American West, so that she could learn the technicalities of modeling. By 11, Jovovich had been photographed by Herb Ritts, and Avedon himself featured her in Revlon’s Most Unforgettable Women In The World campaign.
Milla and Galina are still devoted to one another, though for years Milla was plagued with insecurities about never matching up to her mother. It wasn’t until 1997’s sci-fi blockbuster, The Fifth Element, that she came into her own. "I met [director] Luc Besson and fell in love and had this person who allowed me to make mistakes and still built me up after. He said, ’Don’t think that just because she does her thing so well, that it makes you any less.’” Despite a short-lived marriage to Besson – the pair divorced in 1999 – they remain friends: "We still meet up and talk," Jovovich says.
It was another director that would become her enduring love. She met Paul W. S. Anderson in 2002 on the set of the first Resident Evil movie. Almost 12 years (the last four married), six films and one daughter later, the love is clearly still there. Anderson hails from Newcastle, and now and again you may find Jovovich up there, eating sausage rolls. “Greggs!” she hoots about the British bakery chain. "I’m a sucker for a pastry. And I love Asda. They do these pre-packaged scones – so soft!" She connects to Anderson’s normal, northern roots. "The fact that he wasn’t raised in London with money is important. No matter how awesome it would be to be a trust-fund kid from an extremely wealthy family, I think often people are pretty miserable when they have everything.’
Which is something that scares her as they raise their daughter, Ever, six, amid the Hollywood elite. She clings to the founding principles of her upbringing – mainly that success isn’t an entitlement but achieved through hard work and education. Hence, Ever, who already speaks better French than her mother, works to a specific reward scheme. "She wants to help our housekeeper, and I’m like, ‘Look, you’re never going to get as much money for sweeping floors as you will for reading books. I know housekeeping is harder, but life’s not like that. So I’ll pay you 10 cents for cleaning the floors and 20 cents for every page you read.’”
Recently, Ever bought a doll with her earnings. “The poor guy at the store – we brought in her piggy bank and unloaded the change. I wanted her to see her money being spent and [say to her], 'Now you have none – if you want something else you’ve got to work for it.’”
Jovovich will begin filming the next instalment of the Resident Evil series sometime next year; before that she is due to shoot Survivor, a mainly London-based thriller co-starring Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan. “I’m at that point where I don’t need to work per se. Which I know sounds so douchey to most people, but I’ve been working since I was a kid, so you know what? Step back, buddy. It’s nice to be able to say, 'Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.’”
