Milica Bogdanovna Jovovich was born on December 17, 1975, in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, the daughter of Galina (née Loginova), a Soviet Russian actress, and Bogdan Jovović, a Serbian doctor. Her maternal ancestors were from the Russian city of Tula. Her paternal ancestors are from the Vasojevići clan in Montenegro, and also lived in Kosovo. She spent most of her early childhood in Moscow, Russian SFSR, her mother’s native city,, and says she was born in Ukraine “pretty much by accident”.

In 1980, when Jovovich was five years old, her family left the Soviet Union and emigrated to London. They subsequently emigrated to Sacramento, California, settling in Los Angeles seven months later. Milla’s parents divorced soon after their arrival in Los Angeles. In 1988, her father had a relationship with an Argentine woman, and they had a son, Marco Jovovich. Due to her parents’ divorce years before, Jovovich saw little of her half brother.

Jovovich’s mother had “raised [her] to be a movie star.” In 1985, Galina Loginova enrolled Jovovich at the age of 10 in acting classes, and when her acting jobs picked up, she started attending school for young actors rather than regular school. In 1988, Jovovich appeared in her debut professional film role as Samantha Delongpre in the romantic thriller Two Moon Junction. Later that year, she appeared in the made-for-television film as Lily McLeod in The Night Train to Kathmandu. She had several roles in television series, including Paradise (1988), Married… with Children (1989) and Parker Lewis Can’t Lose (1990).

Jovovich had begun working on a music album as early as 1988, when she was signed by SBK Records after the company heard a demo she recorded. In August 1990, she asserted in an interview that the then-forthcoming album would be “a mix between Kate Bush, Sinéad O’Connor, This Mortal Coil, and the Cocteau Twins”. After it was initially presented by SBK strictly as a pop album, Jovovich protested, insisting on using her personal poetry for lyrics and recording her own instrumental material. Jovovich had written the songs when she was fifteen, with the exception of a Ukrainian folk song, “In a Glade”, that she covered. In April 1994, billed under her first name, she released The Divine Comedy, a title that was a reference to the epic poem by Dante Alighieri of the same name. Jovovich had chosen the title after seeing Russian artist Alexis Steele’s proposed cover artwork sketch for the then untitled album. Jovovich found that the sketch had “all the struggle that I’m singing about. It IS the divine comedy”. The Divine Comedy was well received by critics, and featured pop-infused traditional Ukrainian folk songs that led to comparisons with musicians Tori Amos and Kate Bush. John McAlley of Rolling Stone called the album “remarkable”, “strikingly mature and rich in invention”, and as featuring “angst-laced poetry with vivid melodies and arrangements that find a common spirit in synth pop, European folk and psychedelic dream rock”.

At age 15, she was cast as the lead in Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), opposite Brian Krause. Given her age and beauty, she was often compared to Brooke Shields, another child model-turned-actress, who had starred in The Blue Lagoon (1980). The role was controversial as, like Shields, Jovovich appeared nude in the film. Jovovich was nominated for “Best Young Actress Starring in a Motion Picture” at the 1991 Young Artist Awards, and “Worst New Star” at the 1991 Golden Raspberry Awards. In 1992, Jovovich co-starred with Christian Slater in the comedy Kuffs. Later that year, she portrayed Mildred Harris in the Charlie Chaplin biographical film Chaplin. In 1993, she acted in Richard Linklater’s film Dazed and Confused. She played Michelle Burroughs, the on-screen girlfriend to Pickford (played by her then-boyfriend Shawn Andrews). Strongly featured in promotions for the film, Jovovich was upset to find her role much reduced in the released film. Discouraged, she took a hiatus from acting roles, moving to Europe.

Prior to her relationship with Anderson, Jovovich married on-screen boyfriend Shawn Andrews in 1992 while filming Dazed and Confused together. Andrews was 21, while Jovovich was 16; the marriage was annulled by her mother two months later. Shortly after the annulment, Jovovich moved to Europe with her friend and musician Chris Brenner where she met and then lived with her new boyfriend, ex-Jamiroquai bassist Stuart Zender, in London from May 1994 to October 1995. In Las Vegas, she married The Fifth Element director Luc Besson in 1997 where they went skydiving directly after the ceremony. They divorced in 1999. In 2000, she briefly dated then Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante saying she fell in love with him after hearing his album Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt six years earlier. Between 1998 and 2001, she befriended the young poet and musician, Anno Birkin, and each was the other’s inspiration behind many of their compositions. Jovovich became involved with Birkin romantically just before his death in a car accident on November 8, 2001.

Jovovich released the track “Gentleman Who Fell”, with an accompanying music video, as the sole single from the album. The music video was originally directed by Lisa Bonet and featured Harry Dean Stanton, but Jovovich was unsatisfied with the results and decided to film another version. The second version of “Gentleman Who Fell”, a homage to Maya Deren. It was directed by Kate Garner and Paul Archard and was subsequently played on MTV. Jovovich toured the United States during most of 1994 to promote the album, opening for Toad the Wet Sprocket and Crash Test Dummies, as well as playing smaller acoustic sets. Jovovich had opted to perform in smaller and more intimate settings, turning down a musical appearance on Saturday Night Live. Jovovich has also been collaborating musically with longtime friend and musician Chris Brenner, who co-wrote with her on the Divine Comedy Album and who was the musical coordinator for the supporting tour. She and Brenner met in 1993 and have since worked together on several ventures. Following The Divine Comedy, she expressed interest in releasing a second album, having had ten songs ready for a future recording that was intended for a Summer 1996 release. Despite the appearance of a lo-fi field recording The People Tree Sessions in 1998, Jovovich has yet to release a second album.

In Los Angeles, her mother tried to get acting jobs, but found little success because of language barriers, and eventually resorted to cleaning houses to earn money. Both parents served as cooks and housekeepers for director Brian De Palma. Her father was convicted and imprisoned for participating in the largest health insurance fraud ever investigated; he was given a 20-year sentence in 1994, but was released in 1999 after serving five years. According to Jovovich, “Prison was good for him. He’s become a much better person. It gave him a chance to stop and think.”

Jovovich attended public schools in Los Angeles, becoming fluent in English in three months. In school, she was teased by classmates for coming from the Soviet Union: “I was called a commie and a Russian spy. I was [never] accepted into the crowd.” At age 12, Jovovich left seventh grade to focus on modeling, which she had started at age nine. She has said she was rebellious during her early teens, engaging in drug use, shopping mall vandalism, and credit-card fraud. In 1994, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of 19.

In addition to being a former smoker, Jovovich has advocated the legalization of cannabis, and appeared in a spread and on the cover for High Times. In an article published in 1994, she said that her only vices were cigarettes and cannabis. She practices yoga and meditates often in attempts to live a healthy lifestyle; although not affiliating with any specific religion, she prays and considers herself a “spiritual person”. She avoids junk foods and prefers to cook for herself. “Being Russian”, Jovovich likes buckwheat and named Japanese soba noodles as her “personal favorite”. Jovovich also enjoys playing the guitar, and writing poems and lyrics for songs.

Jovovich returned to acting in 1997 with a lead role in the French science fiction action film The Fifth Element, alongside Bruce Wilis and Gary Oldman. This was written and directed by Luc Besson. She portrayed Leeloo, an alien who helps to save the planet. Jovovich said she “worked like hell: no band practice, no clubs, no pot, nothing” to acquire the role and impress Besson. Jovovich co-created and mastered an alien fictional language of over 400 words for her role. She wore a costume that came to be known as the “ACE-bandage” costume; the body suit designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier was made of medical bandages. The Fifth Element was selected as the opening film for the 1997 Cannes Film Festival and its worldwide box office gross was over $263 million, more than three times its budget of $80 million. The Fifth Element was often praised for its visual style; critic James Berardinelli wrote, “Jovovich makes an impression, although her effectiveness has little to do with acting and less to do with dialogue”. Jovovich was nominated for “Favorite Female Newcomer” at the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards and “Best Fight” at the MTV Movie Awards. The film inspired a video game and a planned Leeloo action figure, but the figure was never released due to licensing problems. In a 2003 interview, Jovovich said Leeloo was her favorite role.

In 1998, Jovovich appeared in Spike Lee’s drama He Got Game, as abused prostitute Dakota Burns; she acted with Denzel Washington and Ray Allen. In 1999, she appeared in the music video for the song “If You Can’t Say No” by Lenny Kravitz. That year she returned to the action genre playing the title role in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, under direction of Luc Besson. She cut her hair short and wore armor in several extensive battle scenes. Jovovich received generally good reviews for her performance, although she also received a Razzie Award nomination for “Worst Actress”. The historical drama did moderately well at the box office, gaining $66 million worldwide. In 2000, Jovovich appeared as the troubled Eloise in The Million Dollar Hotel, a film based on a concept story by Bono of the band U2 and Nicholas Klein. Directed by Wim Wenders, Jovovich starred alongside Jeremy Davies and Mel Gibson; she provided vocals on the film’s soundtrack. That year she also played bar owner Lucia, in the British western film The Claim (2000). This was followed by a supporting role as the evil Katinka in the comedy Zoolander (2001).

In May 1999, Jovovich along with Chris Brenner formed an experimental band called “Plastic Has Memory”, in which she wrote the songs, sang, and played electric guitar. The band was “[m]uch heavier and darker than the vaguely Ukrainian folk-sounding elements of her first album” and had a similar sound to a grunge and trip hop Portishead. Plastic Has Memory played about a dozen shows in Los Angeles and New York City for a potential Virgin Records album release, one of which Mick Jagger had attended. Though Plastic Has Memory was featured on Hollywood Goes Wild!, a benefit celebrity compilation album, the group never formally released a record and is no longer together.

In 2002, Jovovich starred in the horror-action film Resident Evil, released in the United States on March 15, 2002 and based on the CAPCOM video game series of the same name. She portrayed Alice, the film’s heroine, who fights a legion of zombies created by the Umbrella Corporation. Jovovich had accepted the role because she and her brother Marco had been fans of the video game franchise. Jovovich had performed all the stunts required in the film, except for a scene that would involve her jumping to a cement platform, which her management deemed too dangerous, and had trained in karate, kickboxing, and combat-training. The film was commercially successful, grossing US$17 million on its opening weekend; it eventually made US$40 million domestically and US$102 million worldwide. Later, she portrayed the manipulative gang wife Erin in No Good Deed (2002), Nadine in the romantic comedy You Stupid Man (2002), punk rocker Fangora (“Fanny”) in Dummy (2003), and provided a guest voice on the television series King of the Hill. The role of Fangora in Dummy allowed Jovovich to act in film with Oscar-winning Adrien Brody, who was a friend prior to filming. Jovovich found it easy to identify with this role because she felt Fangora possessed similar qualities to the actress’ own life.

Jovovich has contributed tracks to several of her film soundtracks, including The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) and Dummy (2002), and has also provided songs for the soundtracks of films in which she has not acted such as Underworld (2003) produced by musician Danny Lohner who was the bass player in Nine Inch Nails for many years. Her song “The Gentlemen Who Fell” was featured on The Rules of Attraction soundtrack in 2002. In 2001, Jovovich was one of many celebrities whose vocals were featured in a cover of “We are Family” to raise money for the American Red Cross. She has appeared as guest vocalist on the song “Former Lover” on Deepak Chopra’s album, A Gift of Love II: Oceans of Ecstasy (2002) and Legion of Boom (2004) by The Crystal Method.

Jovovich was said to be designer Miuccia Prada’s muse in 2002; a 2003 article claimed she was Gianni Versace’s “favourite supermodel”. In 2004, Jovovich topped Forbes magazine’s “Richest Supermodels of the World” list, earning a reported $10.5 million, and in 2006, Jovovich was picked up by Mango, a Spanish clothing line, as their new spokesmodel and is featured in their advertising campaigns; she can also be seen in adverts for Etro. She has said that “Modeling was never a priority” and that the money she earns enables her “to be selective about the creative decisions [she] make[s]”.

Since 2003, Jovovich has worked with musician Maynard James Keenan, of Tool and A Perfect Circle, on his Industrial side project Puscifer, contributing vocals to the track “REV 22:20”, which was featured on various film soundtracks in its original or a remixed form. As of January 2009, she can be heard collaborating with Maynard and Danny Lohner on the Puscifer track called, “The Mission.” She also performed the song at the first live Puscifer performance on February 13, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Danny Lohner, and longtime music collaborator Chris Brenner currently continue to record and perform with Jovovich who has made several highly praised appearances in recent years.

Jovovich and fellow model Carmen Hawk launched a line of clothing called Jovovich-Hawk in 2003. The pair opened a showroom in New York City’s Greenwich Village on September 13, 2005. All of the dresses for Jovovich-Hawk line were designed by herself and her partner Carmen Hawk. The atelier is based in Los Angeles, but pieces could be found at Fred Segal in Los Angeles, Harvey Nichols, and over 50 stores around the world. Vogue praised the line for its “girl-about-town cult status most designers spend years trying to achieve.” In November 2006, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and US Vogue nominated Jovovich-Hawk for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award. Jovovich-Hawk was nominated as a finalist, although Doo-Ri Chung took the top prize. In 2007, Jovovich and Hawk designed the costume for Jovovich’s character in Resident Evil: Extinction. The shorts her Resident Evil character wear are a variation on the ‘Alice Star’ Shorts from the Spring 2007 collection. Later, Jovovich-Hawk signed a deal to design a diffusion collection for Target’s Go International campaign, following in the footsteps of Luella, Paul & Joe and Proenza Schouler. In late 2008, Jovovich and Hawk mutually agreed to end the business due to increased demands on their time. Jovovich explained, “I’m an artist. I’m not someone who can deal with shipping rates and taxes”.

In 2004, Jovovich reprised the role of Alice in the sequel to Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. The role required her to do fight training for three hours a day, in addition to the three months prior to filming in which she had “gun training, martial arts, everything”. Apocalypse received even more negative reactions from the critics than the first film, but it was an even greater commercial success, ranking number one at the box office unlike the first film. Following the release of the film, Jovovich was unhappy with the critical results and director Alexander Witt’s effort. She noted during an interview that year that her large action films take care of the commercial part of her career, while she acts in “independent little films that never come out” to appease her artistic side, and “It’s a good balance”. The following year, she was featured in Gore Vidal’s faux trailer remake of Caligula, as Drusilla. In 2006, Jovovich’s film, the science fiction/action thriller Ultraviolet, was released on March 3. She played the title role of Violet Song jat Shariff, a role that also involved heavily choreographed fight sequences. It was not screened for critics, but when reviewed, it was critically panned, grossing US$31 million worldwide. Also in 2006, Jovovich also starred in .45, as Kat, the revenge driven girlfriend of an illegal gun and drug dealer with Scottish actor and DJ Angus Macfadyen.

In 2004, Jovovich was ranked No. 69 on Maxim magazine’s “Top 100 Hot List”, ranked No. 82 in 2005 and ranked No. 21 in 2010. Maxim also named her No. 11 on their list of “Hottest Nerd Crushes”. In 2008, she was ranked No. 90 on Ask Men’s Top 99 Women of 2008 List. In 2011, Jovovich attended and sang at the birthday celebration of Mikhail Gorbachev. The actress also gave a speech in which she thanked Gorbachev, saying that when she and her family left the Soviet Union in 1980 they were sure that they would never see their relatives again and that thanks to him they have been reunited.

In 2007, Jovovich reprised her role as Alice in Resident Evil: Extinction, the third of the Resident Evil series. The film grossed an estimated US$24 million on its opening weekend, topping the box office gross for that week. In 2009, Jovovich starred in David Twohy’s A Perfect Getaway with Kiele Sanchez, Timothy Olyphant, and Steve Zahn. The film is a thriller about a newlywed couple (Milla and Zahn) on their honeymoon in Hawaii. Reviews for the film were mostly positive; while The Hollywood Reporter felt that Jovovich gave a “fairly subtle performance”, The Globe and Mail noted that she and “¨[…]Kiele Sanchez manage to bring some dramatic tension to the frightened-girlfriend moments”. A Perfect Getaway garnered modest box office returns. Jovovich starred in the science-fiction thriller The Fourth Kind, as a psychologist in Alaska who uses hypnosis to uncover memories from her patients of alien abduction. While the film was largely panned by critics, it made US$47.71 million in cinemas worldwide.

Jovovich resides in homes in Los Angeles and New York City with her husband, film writer and director Paul W. S. Anderson, whom she married on August 22, 2009. The two met while working on the 2002 film Resident Evil, which Anderson wrote and directed, and in which Jovovich starred. Anderson proposed to Jovovich in 2003, and the two were “engaged on-and-off for four years” before becoming a couple again early in 2007. On November 3, 2007, Jovovich gave birth to their first child, daughter Ever Gabo, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. Their second child, daughter Dashiel Edan, was born on April 1, 2015. In 2019, Jovovich revealed she was pregnant with her third daughter after losing her pregnancy two years prior. They welcomed their third daughter, Osian Lark Elliot, on February 2, 2020.

In 2010, Jovovich returned as Alice in the fourth movie of the Resident Evil series, Afterlife, which was directed by her husband, Paul W. S. Anderson, and portrayed the mother of a promiscuous and troubled high school student in the independent coming-of-age dramedy Dirty Girl, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, opposite Juno Temple, William H. Macy, Mary Steenburgen, and Tim McGraw. In its review for the latter film, The Hollywood Reporter found Jovovich to be “terrific” in what it described as a “sweet [and] sassy period comedy with a Juno sensibility and the soul of a Little Miss Sunshine”. Jovovich played the wife of a jailed arsonist in Stone, a psychological thriller co-starring Robert De Niro and Edward Norton. Filming began in May 2009 at the recently closed Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan. The film was released in late 2010, to a mixed response. Nevertheless, The A.V. Club noted that Jovovich was “particularly good as a breathy femme fatale who seduces De Niro with a mere change in inflection”.

Jovovich starred in Paul W. S. Anderson’s romantic action adventure film The Three Musketeers, as Milady de Winter, in 2011, alongside Matthew Macfadyen, Logan Lerman, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, and Christoph Waltz. After the lackluster response for Musketeers, Jovovich criticised Summit Entertainment for not “promoting [the film] properly” as a “family film” in the United States. Deadline Hollywood reported that Summit responded: “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about and we don’t know where she’s coming from.” She would next headline the little-seen psychological thriller Faces in the Crowd, which was written and directed by Julien Magnat; in it, she plays the survivor of a serial killer’s attack that leaves her suffering from a condition called prosopagnosia, which renders her unable to recognize faces. Sight and Sound remarked that the film suffered from “a central performance not quite strong enough to win Jovovich recognition as a dramatic actress”. Also in 2011, Jovovich appeared as a Ukrainian con artist in Famke Janssen’s directorial debut film Bringing Up Bobby, alongside Marcia Cross, and starred in the romantic comedy Lucky Trouble, which was her film debut in Russian language.

Jovovich returned to her role as Alice in the fifth installment of Resident Evil for Resident Evil: Retribution, which was released on September 14, 2012. She played an ambitious woman and the second wife of the leader of a motorcycle club in 2014’s Cymbeline, a film version of the eponymous play by William Shakespeare, and in 2015’s Survivor, she took on the role of a Diplomatic Security Service/Foreign Service officer at the US Embassy in London. Both films received a VOD release in North America, despite theatrical runs abroad. Jovovich made a cameo appearance reprising the role of villain Katinka in 2016’s Zoolander 2. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016), the sixth and final film of the Resident Evil franchise, starred Jovovich as Alice as she continues her vengeance against Umbrella for the death of her allies and the catastrophe they have caused. Time Out in its review for the film noted: “While the franchise has slackened into dependably dumb post-apocalyptic thrills, star Milla Jovovich has only gotten better, seasoning her long-legged athleticism with a commanding stare”. The Final Chapter was the highest-grossing film in the franchise, earning over US$312 million worldwide.

A new single called “Electric Sky” was released on May 18, 2012, and presented at the Life Ball. In 2017, she collaborated in the single “Attention of Ernest Shalubin”. Jovovich continues to write songs which she refers to as “demos”, and which are provided for free in MP3 format on her official website. She provides license to freely download and remix the tracks, but reserves the right to sell and issue them.

In 2012, Jovovich was hired as the new “face” of a global advertising campaign for wristwatch and jewelry retailer Jacob & Co. In 2018, Jovovich became the “face” of a global advertising campaign for Balmain.

In Shock and Awe (2017), Jovovich played the wife of an investigator working on the reasons behind the Bush Administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, starring opposite Woody Harrelson and Tommy Lee Jones. In Future World (2018), she obtained the role of a drug lord, alongside James Franco, who also directed the film. While reviewers felt Jovovich was “underused” in Shock and Awe, Future World holds a 0% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 9 reviews. Jovovich starred as the administrator of an island-bound reform school in the fantasy film Paradise Hills (2019), the directorial debut of Alice Waddington. She also played the evil Vivienne Nimue, the Blood Queen in the Hellboy reboot movie, released in 2019.

In 2019, Jovovich was among over a hundred of models have signed a petition to help protect Victoria’s Secret models against sexual misconduct.