The Fifth Element - About The Cast

The Fifth Element: About The Cast

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BRUCE WILLIS (Korben Dallas) is unique in the ranks of top box office stars. While his status as an international celebrity is solidly based on a series of carefully crafted actionadventure blockbusters, his ability to stretch his screen persona, along with his taste for artistic risk, have won him industry respect and critical acclaim.

Acting became Willis's sole profession when, in 1 984, he was selected to take over the lead role of Eddie in the original New York production of Sam Shepard's "Fool For Love." That success was followed by an opportunity to audition for the role of David Addison in the television series Moonlighting, opposite Cybill Shepherd, which went on to become the television sensation of the mid-80s.

In 1986, Willis returned to his first perforrning love, cutting the LP Bruce Willis: The Return ofBruno for Motown Records. Blues shouter "Bruno Radoni" (Willis) subsequently starred in his own HBO special. The album achieved platinum status in the course of its 29 weeks on the national charts, spawning the 1989 follow-up, Ifit Don't Kill You, ft Just Makes You Stronger.

While Moonlighting continued its successful run, Willis made a successful transition to film in 1987, starring in the Blake Edwards smash, Blind Date, opposite Kim Basinger. Another Blake Edwards film, the period mystery Sunset, followed in 1988. Later that same year, his performance as street-smart cop John McClane in the surprise blockbuster Die Hard solidified Willis's position as a top box-office draw.

In 1989, Willis's nuanced performance as haunted Vietnam veteran Bmmet Smith in Norman Jewi son's In Country was the first in a series of change-of-pace roles that have served to add fresh momentum to his screen career. Willis next provided the voice of wise-cracking baby "Mikey" in the family comedy Look Who's Talking, and its 1990 sequel, Look Who's Talking, Too.

Willis brought John McC lane back to dominate the summer box office in Die Hard 2, and then starred in Brian DePalma's Bonfire of the Vanities, opposite Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffith. Willis tackled the risky role of James Urbanski, wife-abuser and murder victim, in 1991's Mortal Thoughts, opposite his wife, Demi Moore. The same year brought Willis to the screen as the daredevil cat burglar Hudson Hawk, as gangster Bo Weidenberg in Billy Bathgate, and private detective Joe Hallenbeck in The Last Boy Scout.

Robert Zemeckis's 1992 Death Becomes Her starred Willis as a mild-mannered plastic surgeon opposite Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. The following year Willis returned to actionadventure in the summer hit Striking Distance.

Willis next appeared in Quentin Tarantino's phenomenally successful second feature, Pulp Fiction, winner of the Palme D'or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. Willis's portrayal of Butch Coolidge, a proud boxer on the skids, won more critical acclaim for the actor, while bolstering his appeal to the next generation of filmgoers. Later in 1994, Willis took on the role of Carl Roebuck, the irresponsible employer of an aging raconteur played by Paul Newman, in Robert Benton's Nobody's Fool, and also starred as Dr. Bill Capra in the erotic thriller The Color of Night.

In 1995, Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys toplined Willis as James Cole, a time traveler on a fateful mission; the following summer, Willis's John McClane returned to battle a mad bomber in the all-stops-out blockbuster Die Hard With A Vengeance. Willis's most recent feature, Walter Hill's Last Man Standing, cast the actor as John Smith, a man who steps in the middle of a Chicago gang war during the prohibition era, in an action drama patterned after the Akira Kurosawa classic Yojimbo.

Currently, Willis is engaged in an ambitious waterfront development plan in the vicinity of his old Southern New Jersey stomping grounds. He also recently completed work on Universal's Jackal project, and is presently filming Broadway Brawlers for Buena Vista.

GARY OLDMAN's (Zorg) talent and charisma are evident in each of his roles, but Oldman's greatest strength is his remarkable range. Over the first decade of his film career, the actor has become a favorite of critics and fans by tackling a wide spectrum of roles, ranging from Sid Vicious through Count Dracula to Ludwig Von Beethoven.

A welder's son, Oldman was born in New Cross, a working-class district in South London, on March 21, 1958, and was working as a sales clerk at a sporting goods shop when he began training for the stage with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre. He subsequently attended the Rose Bradford College of Speech and Drama on a scholarship and, following graduation, joined a touring repertory company. Not long thereafter, the charismatic young actor became a significant presence on the British stage, first coming to national attention in a brief, fiery performance as the skinhead Coxey in Mike Leigh's 1983 BBC telefilm Mean Time.

In 1985, Oldman joined London's Royal Court Theatre, an association that continued through the next four years. His first major screen role soon followed, a dead-on portrayal of doomed punk rocker Sid Vicious in Alex Cox's Sid & Nancy, in 1986. By contrast, Stephen Frears's acclaimed film Prick Up Your Ears, cast Oldman as iconoclastic playwright Joe Orton, a very different character similarly plagued by early fame, an early demonstration of Oldman's uncanny ability to transform his screen persona.

Oldman was next paired with Alan Bates in the film We Think The World Of You, as Johnny, the conflicted lover of a gentle, older man, and was featured in Nicholas Roeg's dark comedy Track 29 as Martin, the long lost, and possibly murderous, son of Theresa Russell.

Martin Campbell's hit psychological thriller Criminal Law cast Oldman as an American attorney embroiled in a cat-and-mouse game with a guilty client set free by his efforts, played by Kevin Bacon. Oldman's first heroic role required him to adopt a seamless U.S. accent, a skill also put to good use in two 1990 films, Chattahoochee, in the role of Emmett Foley, an iumate in a southern mental facility, and as Jackie Flannery in Phil Joanou's State Of Grace, a drama set among the Irish-American gangs of Hell's Kitchen in New York. The same year also teamed Oldman, as Rosenkrantz, with Tim Roth as Guildenstern, in Tom Stoppard's film adaptation of his own play, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Oliver Stone's controversial JFK featured Oldman's startling impersonation of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1991, and in the following year Oldman brought a creepy gothic sensuality to the title role in Francis Ford Coppola's production, Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Oldman's study of American dialects again paid off handsomely with his portrayal of the deadlocked Drexl Spivey in Tony Scott's True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino. His next feature, Romeo is Bleeding, blazed a trail even deeper into the realm of neo-noir, with his brooding portrayal of Jack Grimaldi, an agent working for the Witness Protection Program, whose lust for money and for co-star Lena Olin sets his path on a downward spiral. Oldman's first professional pairing with director Luc Besson came in 1994's The Professional, playing opposite Jean Reno as Norman Stansfield, an operative for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, gone wildly out of control.

Also in 1994, director Bernard Rose chose Oldman for the demanding lead of Immortal Beloved, a film acclaimed for its poetic exploration of the inner life of an obsessive musical genius, Ludwig Von Beethoven.

More recently, Oldman has appeared as Reverend Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter, and as a sadistic warden of Alcatraz in Murder in the First. Oldman was also featured in Basquiat, as Albert Milo, one of the few fictional characters in the film bio of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. That role was based in part upon the film's director Julian Schnabel, who had been an intimate of the late tragic genius.

Oldman will be seen later this year starring with Harrison Ford in Air Force One. Currently, Oldman is working with director Stephen Hopkins, playing the role of Dr. Smith in New Line's science fiction film, Lost in Space. He will make his feature film directorial debut later with Columbia's forthcoming Nil By Mouth, produced by Luc Besson.

MILLA JOVOVICH (Leeloo) was born December 17th, 1975 in Kiev, Ukraine, the daughter of Russian stage actress Gallina Loginova and Yugoslavian pediatrician Bogie Jovovich.

When Jovovich was five years old, her family emigrated to Sacramento. Already a startling beauty at age 11, Jovovich began pursuing an acting career; when her photograph reached the offices of the Prima modeling agency, a somewhat different career path began.

Her first cover, for the Italian fashion magazine Lei and a six-page fashion spread shot by Herb Ritts for a French fashion magazine, catapulted the young, barely-trained model to the top ranks. During her first year, she'd done 15 fashion covers and countless other shoots, still managing the time for her studies -- including the training necessary for runway work -- and, like any L.A. teen, to "hang out at the mall."

Having gained international fame, Jovovich decided to focus upon her original goal. She made her screen debut in 1988's Two Moon Junction as the younger sister of Sherilyn Fenn, and also starred in a Disney Channel fantasy feature, Night Train to Kathmandu, as the daughter of two archeologists, who befriends a magical prince. Her first toplined feature was 1991's Return to the Blue Lagoon, and, at 14, she was featured in Richard Attenborough's Chaplin, as Mildred Harris, the first wife of the pioneering film comedian and director. A brief role in Richard Linklater's high school comedy Dazed and Confused followed. Though her screen-time was brief, the role was her singing debut, as the character gave an a capella rendition of a few lines from Jovovich's own composition The Alien Song. She also starred opposite Christian Slater in Kuffs.

A student of voice and piano since a very early age, Jovovich bought her first electric guitar at the age of 13 and was eagerly receptive when approached by an agent from SBK Records. At the age of 15, Jovovich set to work writing songs for her first album, but was surprised to learn that the label wanted to package her as a pop diva, working with other writers and arrangers. With the help of her friend Chris Brenner, the teen engaged in a battle with the label that eventually resulted in the release of Milla: The Divine Comedy on EMI Records in 1994-- her own songs, recorded her own way, and hailed by such music industry giants as Rolling Stone magazine.

Putting aside her acting and modeling careers, Jovovich pursued a strenuous tour schedule through the remainder of 1994 and the start of 1995. She was preparing to enter the studio to begin work on her second album when the opportunity to star in The Fifth Element arose.

On the completion of principal shooting, Jovovich returned to modeling for a handful of plum assignments, and has started work on her second album for release in late 1997.

IAN HOLM (Cornelius), born on Sept. 12, 1931, in Goodmayes, England, began his acting career with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and distinguished himself on the London stage for more than a decade before winning the Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway production of Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming" in 1967, a role he reprised for the screen version. His film debut, in "The Bofors Gun," won him the British Film Academy Award as best supporting actor in 1968.

Audiences worldwide discovered Holm in his 1979 role as Ash, the treacherous android in Ridley Scott's Alien, and the actor eamed his second BFA Award -- as well as a Cannes Film Festival Award and an Oscar nomination -- for his performance as Sam Mussabini in Chariots of Fire in 1981. He has since lent his talents to such films as David Hare's Wetherby, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Woody Allen's Another Woman, Franco Zeffirrelli's Hamlet, David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, Nick Hytner's The Madness of King George, Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein and Campbell Scott's Big Night.

Holm's recent theatrical engagements have included "King Lear" at the British National Theatre, and an award-winning turn in Harold Pinter's "Moonlight." Later this year, Holm will be seen in Sidney Lumet's film, Night Falls on Manhattan, Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter and Danny Boyle's A Life Less Ordinary.

CHRIS TUCKER (Ruby Rhod) entered film by way of comedy; he was cast in a brief but hilarious role in House Party III after he was spotted doing his stand-up routine on television's Def Comedy Jam. He subsequently co-starred with Ice Cube in F. Gary Gray's Friday, and offered a stand-out performance as Skip in the Hughes Brothers' Dead Presidents. Money Talks, co-starring Tucker and Charlie Sheen, will be released later this year from New Line Cinema.

LUKE PERRY (Billy), a native of Ohio, is best known to television audiences worldwide for his smoldering portrayal of Dylan McKay in the television series Beverly Hills 90210. His feature debut was in David Beaird's film adaptation of his play Scorchers, in 1992, followed by his first starring role, in the sleeper hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In 1994, Perry starred as national rodeo champion Lane Frost, in John G. Avildsen's biographical film 8 Seconds. Most recently, Perry starred opposite Ashley Judd in John McNaughton's critically acclaimed crime drama, Normal Life.

BRION JAMES (General Munro) is one of Hollywood's preferred character actors, appearing in such landmark films of the last two decades as Bob Rafaelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice, Walter Hill's 48 Hrs., Andrei Konchalovsky's Tango & Cash and Altman's The Player.

Through6ut the same period, he has maintained an even higher profile in such genre entertainments as Blue Sunshine, Enemy Mine, Blade Runner, Cherry 2000, Brainsmasher: A Love Story Scanner Cop and the Coen Brothers-Sam Raimi collaboration, Crimewave. Since 1976, he has accumulated credits in over 80 films; later in 1997, he will be seen in Bombshell, Deadly Ransom and The Killing Jar.

A veteran of over twenty feature films, TINY LISTER, JR.'s (President Lindberg) credits include Barb Wire, A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Things to Do in Denver When You 're Dead, Friday Don Juan de Marco, Trespass, Posse, Universal Soldier and No Holds Barred. On television, Lister has appeared in such series as Moesha, In the House, Malcolm & Eddie, Martin, ER, The Fresh Prince ofBel Air, Matlock and HBO's First and Ten.

Stage comic LEE EVANS (Fog), seen in the Academy Award-nominated short Brooms, first came to international attention in Peter Chelsom's film Funny Bones for his show-stopping performance as Jack, a man with an instinctual ability to make people laugh. Evans will next film Mouse Hunt for Dreamworks SKG, costarring with Nathan Lane.

Evans has headlined three British TV productions, An Evening with Lee Evans (1993), The World ofLee Evans (1995) and The Lee Evans Show (1996). In February of 1996, Evans opened a live, one-man show in London's West End, which ran for 8 sell-out weeks and received rave reviews from the press.

TRICKY (Right Arm), the 28-year-old "Majesty of Trip-Hop," makes his acting debut in The Fifth Element. With his 1995 album Maxinquaye, the Bristol, UK native mixed elements of dub, techno, trance, hip-hop, and gothic, creating a synthesis that broke all musical barriers. In 1996, Tricky continued to astound fans and critics, with three releases that too the new musical thread in three separate but related directions -- the street-flavored Grassroots EP, the eclectic Nearly God album (featuring collaborations with such talents as Iceland's Bjork and Allison Moyet), and, in his second "official" solo album, Pre-Millenial Tension. All three boast Tricky's uniquely anti-romantic lyrics, and include the participation of his favored vocalist, Martina Tooley Bird, with whom he lives in London.

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