Milla Jovovich almost quit first Resident Evil film over Michelle Rodriguez casting

Milla Jovovich almost quit the Resident Evil film franchise before it began because she felt threatened by the casting of Michelle Rodriguez.

The model-turned-actress admits she feared the Latino newcomer would upstage her in the film after writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson rewrote the script to include a role for Rodriguez, who was wowing critics with her movie debut in Girlfight at the time.

"I was shooting something else, and Paul had hired Michelle Rodriguez to play Rain," Milla tells Inverse. "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 (sic).

"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 (my character) Alice. And then Alice became this tag-along."

Jovovich reveals she read the new draft for the 2002 film on a plane ride from Canada to Germany and was "livid" by the time she arrived in Berlin to shoot the movie.

"I got to the hotel and said (to Paul), 'We have to have a big talk or I'm going to be on a flight tomorrow morning'," Milla recalls. "So Paul ended up coming over that evening and we literally sat for three hours and went through the script, page by page... I pointed out every time I felt like my great scenes were taken away."

The director assured his leading lady she had misinterpreted his new script and the intense chat led to a romance between Milla and her director. They officially began dating as they made the movie. The couple wed in 2009 and went on to make five more Resident Evil movies.

The final film in the franchise, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, was released last year (16).