Milla Jovovich Almost Quit 'Resident Evil' Over Michelle Rodriguez's Character

Here’s something you might not know about the history of the Resident Evil movie franchise – Milla Jovovich almost quit before production ever began!

When Michelle Rodriguez was cast in the role of Rain, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson rewrote the script for her as she was getting Oscar buzz for her movie debut in Girlfight. This did not sit well with Milla, who felt her action scenes were being taken away.

“I almost quit the movie. I was shooting something else, and Paul had hired Michelle Rodriguez to play Rain. And she had just come off Girlfight and there was Oscar buzz. She was very hot at that moment, and my hotness had sort of been already four years old by that point,” Milla said in an interview with Inverse. “So Paul rewrote the script for her. It pretty much made my character ‘the girl,’ and Rain was ‘the guy.’ She got all of my big action scenes, and she became like Alice. And then Alice became this tag-along.”

“I didn’t get the new draft until I was leaving to go to Germany from Canada, where I was working. I ended up reading the script on the plane, so by the time I landed in Berlin, I was livid. I got to the hotel and said, ‘We have to have to a big talk or I’m going to be on a flight tomorrow morning,’” Milla added. “So Paul ended up coming over that evening and we literally sat for three hours and went through the script, page by page. He was like, ‘What do you mean? This didn’t change that much?’ So I was like, ‘OK, why don’t we start with page one?’ I pointed out every time I felt like my great scenes were taken away. That was how we started our relationship.”

Milla and Paul began dating while working on the first film. They got married in 2009 and have two children – daughters Ever Gabo, 9, and Dashiel Edan, 2.