Resident Evil: Extinction comes to Showcase on Saturday, December 12 at 10pm ET/PT

In Extinction, the third installment of the mega-successful Resident Evil franchise, the stunning Kiev-born supermodel-turned-actress Milla Jovovich returns as Alice, a woman forced to battle members of the undead -- victims of a viral infection that has destroyed most of mankind -- on her very own. Implanted with a tracking device that will lead the corrupt, heartless Umbrella Corporation to murder the few remaining, non-infected survivors of the devastating T-Virus, Alice has chosen to go solo in her fight against the zombies that inhabit the ravaged, post-apocalyptic hell-scape that she now shares with the few survivors of the disease and the undead.

Although the 33-year-old Jovovich has portrayed Joan of Arc in director (and one-time husband) Luc Besson’s The Messenger and scored top-notch roles in Zoolander, Dazed and Confused and He Got Game, Jovovich is probably best known to most film aficionados for her work in the Evil series -- which will add a fourth with the release of 2011's Resident Evil: Afterlife, a 3D affair directed by her current husband Paul W.S. Anderson.

Having spent the first part of the shoot on location in Mexacali (a stand-in for the barren, hot American Southwest), the Russell Mulcahy-directed/Paul W.S. Anderson-penned Extinction had just relocated to Los Angeles to begin shooting interior shots for the film when Milla and I began our chat. “Too bad you came today because the scene we’re doing now is like a boring stage play — in Mexicali, it was so much more exciting,” Jovovich said teasingly about the timing of my 2007 set visit. “You would have really gotten into the action.” Luckily, Jovovich’s fans got into the action and loved Extinction even more than the first two installments, turning it into the most popular film of the franchise.

How does Alice end up wearing such a sexy and stylish post-apocalyptic ensemble?
Well, she’s been out in the desert, so it’s pretty hot. I would imagine she’d want to breathe a little bit but she’s got the guns, so she’s protected. I don't know, it just seemed practical.

Did you have input into Alice’s costume?
Yes, I did. Obviously, I had a lot of input. Actually, since I do a clothing line, I try to come up with as many fashion ideas as I can. I mean, she has to have just the right look — even when she is fighting zombies. [laughs]

In a nutshell, what is going on with Alice in Extinction?
Well, after she escaped Umbrella [Corporation] in the second movie, they all went into hiding and there was an accident where in the last movie, it was like ‘Alice-vision’ — obviously Umbrella had hooked her up, via satellite, so that everything she sees, they see. So they found the hiding place and a lot of people died. So my character decides to go out and just be on her own, so that she doesn’t put people in danger. But she has like a radio to listen to the signal, so she kind of follows the caravan, Carlos and Claire’s caravan without getting too close, but just in case, she’s there. So she’s protecting them, but at the same time keeping her distance. She’s definitely a loner. Just out by herself.

What is the box office appeal of beautiful women fighting monsters?
You know what? I don’t really think about it. I just love to do Yoga and fight training. I just have a lot of fun doing these movies.

Do you have a say in what happens in Alice’s continuing story arc? For instance, did you give any advice to Russell [Mulcahy] for Extinction or would you give any input into what the next film should be about?
Little things, like all actors get some say in their character, for sure. But yeah, I mean, I’ve been always really involved in the script process too, putting my two cents in. [laughs] Mostly just asking questions and seeing if people can answer them. If they can’t, I’m like, ‘Okay, just go think about that and come back to me when you have an answer.’ Or sometimes I have a problem and the director or Paul [W.S. Anderson] or somebody will just say, ‘Oh, because it’s like this and this and this.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, that makes sense.’” [laughs]

You’ve never had a fight with a Resident Evil director, writer or producer where you were like, “No, Alice definitely would not do that?”
Not a big fight, but definitely I’ve said a couple times, ‘No, no, no, this is not like in her character.'

Since the Resident Evil movies contain such dark, gloomy and depressing emotional undercurrents, is it necessary for you to keep things light on the set?
No, I think that when I’m happy, definitely the rest of the crew’s happy. So I like to try to be up and motivating, because it kind of keeps the morale up. It’s been a hard move from Mexicali to here, so everyone’s kind of exhausted at the moments. I just try to keep it light and nice on set.

As you make more Resident Evil movies, are they giving you more stunt work you can do and using your stunt person less?
Well, the stunt people always end up working on second unit and all that, anyway. But yeah, most of the time when I’m on set, I do my own stunts. We’ll do the rehearsal with Joanne, my stunt double. Some of the stuff she does just because they have to let me go after a certain number of hours, blah, blah, blah. But most of the stunts I usually do myself, unless the insurance company won’t cover it.

Are the insurance embargoes increasing over time?
Oh yeah, we just did a great shot last week in Mexicali that was really cool. I get to jump off this bridge off this container. It’s a rad shot. I had a wire, of course, but it wasn’t like a Peter Pan thing. It was just making sure that if anything happen, he could raise me up but I pretty much did the jump and had this really hard landing so it looked real. I like to make it as realistic as possible because then I don’t have to act so much. I can just react and just be natural because you jump down that hard, all you can do is go, ‘Ugh’ or whatever. You don’t have to kind of try so hard, so I like to keep it real.

In Extinction, you have to revisit some of the scenes from the first film. How do you feel about that?
Actually, we haven’t shot that yet. It’s going to be here on the stage coming up in the next month.

Are you looking forward to going back and doing those scenes even better?
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I haven’t seen what they’ve worked out yet for the dog sequence but the way it’s written is pretty cool. And it’s a great setup, like where she ends up, captured by these survivalists and their kind of weird, creepy Satan worshiper dudes with symbols on the wall. It’s like the post-apocalyptic group that’s kind of like doing human sacrifice hoping things will get better. It’s really cool, very Blair Witch.

What about playing two Alices?
We shot one scene where I get dumped. They dump me five times. I’m like, ‘You’re just doing this to say that you dumped me like five times, right?’ But it was cute. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, dump!’ It’s going to be cool. It took me off guard, that part of the script, so I think it will take the audience a little off guard, too. It’s got some interesting twists to it so it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be great to get sliced by a laser.

Does what you go through in real life help you with Alice each time you portray her?
Well, definitely, I’m sure. The more I live, the more I experience, it helps with every movie, I would imagine. Every little bit counts, so I think the older I get the more comfortable I am with myself. Not just with myself but who I want to be, who I don’t want to be and who I’d like to try to be. That’s what movies are for me, just finding those different parts inside yourself and playing up on them, you know. It’s like every movie that I do, I kind of tend to try and find it in my real life, so definitely certain situations might remind me of the situation in the script. I’ll just be like, ‘Okay, just listen to how you do this or how did you say that?’ Remember, like I just did this audition for this comedy and couldn’t be 360 degrees different from what I’m doing now. I was just thinking, ‘My God, how am I going to get in the mood and be like crazy and funny and laughing? I just feel so depressed. I’m in the desert, I’m so hot and ugh.’ And then when I start thinking about it, I was like, ‘Just remember when you did that ride in Magic Mountain. How were you then? What was it like? What kind of noises were you making? How were you reacting? Try and get that feeling.’ So I just try and kind of relate it to whatever I can in my life.

How did you initially get involved with the action/sci-fi/thriller genre?
Well, gosh. I got The Fifth Element, which sort of started me off in that direction, and then with the first Resident Evil, it was my brother's favorite video game, and I figured it would be great to have another big action movie under my belt because I’d love doing it.

Your next film, A Perfect Getaway, is a thriller, followed by the alien abduction film The Fourth Kind. Then you are doing The Winter Queen, a Russian period piece, before making the next Resident Evil. Are you planning to stick to action/thrillers or are you branching out as an actress to make different types of movies?
The last few years have been kind of different and unusual for me, because it’s kind of like the first time I’ve done consecutive action films. Usually it’s like an action film, some independent movies, then another action film. I try to mix it up. It’s just the last couple years it just worked out that way. It’s just hard. Independents, you can do so many of them and you never know what’s going to come out and what’s not going to come out, so it’s screwed up. I’ve done quite a lot of movies that just haven’t seen the light of day either. But, with big studio action films, you know you’ll work will be seen and appreciated. I just want to do the best movies I can —whether they are love stories, action films, thrillers or romantic comedies. I’m ready for it all.