Interview

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Milla Jovovich is the action hero after the last action hero, and she has become a huge star on the ultrawide screen by alternately threatening the world and saving it in films such as The Fifth Element (1997) and the Resident Evil series. Hers has been one of the stranger career arcs of our time: From being a child star and then taking over the Brooke Shields nymphette franchise, she moved on to supermodeldom, then became an independent film actress and ultimately an unlikely kick-ass superwoman who seems to have taken over the Stallone-Willis-Schwarzenegger saving-the-world business. But when you think about it, saving the earth is kind of a woman’s gig, isn’t it?

Milla has played Joan of Arc, a supreme being, and a genetically transformed superweapon and/or savior, but this year she’s kicking butt in a more down-to-earth way, in MGM’s The Perfect Getaway, in which she plays a terrorized honeymooner who strikes back, and in The 4th Kind, a conspiracy-theory thriller set in Alaska. She’s also shooting Keep Coming Back, the directorial debut of the great actor William H. Macy, where she plays a former stripper. And she’s still the face of L’Oréal Paris, which must make great products because Milla looks as gorgeous today at 33 as she did when she first signed on with the cosmetics giant 13 years ago. Glenn O’Brien interviewed her on the phone, coast-to-coast, as ’08 ticked into ’09. Glenn was in Connecticut minding his son Oscar, and Milla was in California minding Ever, her daughter with her fiancé and Resident Evil (2002) director, Paul W.S. Anderson.

GLENN O’BRIEN: Hi, Milla.

MILLA JOVOVICH: How’s it going? Did you have a nice holiday?

GO: I’m starting to have a nice holiday.

MJ: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.

GO: No, it’s not like that. It’s just that we have an 8-year-old, and we go to visit his grandparents and 12 cousins for Christmas, and it’s a really long drive, and I always get a speeding ticket. And then the bed is hard, and my arms fall asleep when I’m asleep.

MJ: Yeah, 8-year-olds on big drives aren’t fun.

GO: Oh, he’s great on drives. But the holidays are all about the kids—I get mine later.

MJ: I have a little girl, 14 months, so I know all about that. But she’s still very little, so I don’t have to deal with the whole “Are we there yet?” thing in the car.

GO: No. You have about another eight months to go. Then she’ll be the boss.

MJ: God, she kind of already is. But she’s amazing.

GO: I worked with you years ago on the Calvin Klein Escape TV campaign with Jean-Baptiste Mondino. It was a long time ago, but you can still find the uncensored version of the commercial on YouTube.

MJ: Really?

GO: Yeah. It’s the one where the guy licks your neck and you flip your shoulder straps off and say to the camera, “Take me!”

MJ: There’s so much stuff that I would never see again if not for YouTube. There is a performance of mine from when I was, like, 18, in Austin,Texas, at the local record shop, singing with my band. I mean, it’s just the cutest thing ever.