Milla Jovovich

Born: 17 December, 1975
Where: Kiev, Ukraine

The former model is best known for her turn as Alice, the streetfighting heroine of the Resident Evil series.

However, she is also at home with broad comedy (Zoolander) and slacker drama (Dazed and Confused).

At the age of five, Jovovich moved from Eastern Europe to California and by the age of nine was studying acting.

Her modelling career also began when she was a child, and 1988 marked her TV acting debut with The Night Train to Kathmandu on The Disney Channel.

She also made her feature film debut that year in Two Moon Junction.

The actress gave up modelling to concentrate on movies and secured her first starring role in Return to the Blue Lagoon - an adventure romance about two children who grow up on a deserted tropical island.

Her career changed direction once more when she decided to release an album - The Divine Comedy - but her music career flopped.

However, she did make appearances in the well-received Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr and Richard Linklater's slacker comedy Dazed and Confused.

(aged 16, she eloped with actor Shawn Andrews to Las Vegas but he mother had the marriage annulled because of her age).

In 1997 she co-starred with Bruce Willis in Luc Besson's sci-fi thriller The Fifth Element and subsequently married the director.

The following year she starred alongside Denzel Washington in the Spike Lee drama She Got Game.

Next up, her husband cast in the title role in his epic, the critically-derided Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.

Things didn't get much better with Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel but did start looking up with Michael Winterbottom's The Claim.

Jovovich also proved she could do comedy as catwalk model Katinka Ingabogovinanana in the fashion spoof Zoolander with Ben Stiller.

Subsequent roles include the comedy Dummy before she was cast in the sci-fi thriller Resident Evil.

Recent work includes the romantic comedy You Stupid Man and the sequel Resident Evil: Apocalypse.