Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Milla Jovovich Has Edward Norton To Thank for Latest Role/'Meteorite Men' Take Cameras 600,000 Miles

Milla Jovovich tells us she has Edward Norton to thank for the fact she wound up playing the femme lead in the big-screen "Stone" opposite him and Robert De Niro — though she didn't find that out until well after the film was made.

Speaking of director John Curran, she relates with a laugh, "I guess I heard once we all started doing press together that John wasn't really convinced I was right for it. Edward really went to bat for me. I don't think John would have talked to me," adds the Kiev-born star, whose recently-released "Resident Evil: Afterlife" is projected to take in $200 million in worldwide box office grosses.

According to Jovovich, Norton pushed Curran to take a look at her in Spike Lee's 1998 Denzel Washington starrer, "He Got Game." "He loved that movie, loved me in that movie, and said, 'You've got to see Milla.'

"Edward and I have been sort of, not specifically trying to find something to work on together — but we've almost done a couple of things that didn't come together, so there was this awareness," she adds.

"Stone" definitely gives her a chance to show off a different side from the action roles that led VH1 to dub her "the reigning queen of kick-butt." As Lucetta, the purring, playful, ultra-sensual wife of Norton's character — who is doing time for arson — she seduces De Niro's parole officer character as a ploy to get her husband sprung. With Lucetta's actions, the morality of both men shifts in the acclaimed dark drama that just opened in limited release.

"It was evident how much thought had gone into the characters," she says, "and how they were steering it away from being just a black-and-white thriller into something so deep it could unearth some truths about human nature and hypocrisy. It shows that what people project to their spouses, their colleagues, their churches — how different that can be from what they're feeling inside and living behind closed doors."

FORWARD LOOKING: Oscar-winning 82-year-old actor Martin Landau appreciates that with the all-pervasive impact of the Internet on entertainment and the media, "It is a different world than what we're used to" — but he's game for it, and then some.

"There is a bit of the Wright Brothers in the air, the newness of the times of technology and change that are going on. In a sense, it has some of the feeling of early television," enthuses the esteemed actor of stage, screen and TV, who heads the Hollywood branch of the Actors Studio.

Today, webisodes are being shown to tiny audiences. Landau recalls when "there were very few television sets, and the only way of capturing a performance in those days was with kinescopes that were really primitive — and look what's become of it."

Landau, who's featured in John Wells' forthcoming "Company Men" with Ben Affleck and Kevin Costner, has no intention of retiring "as long as I'm perpendicular."

ROCKS IN THEIR HEADS: If there were a prize for distance traveled during the filming of a TV series, Geoffrey Notkin and Steve Arnold would have to be in the running for it. The duo has just completed production on Season 2 of their "Meteorite Men" show, and, Notkin reports, "We crunched the numbers, and we've gone 60,000 miles since we started this season. We went to the ends of the earth, literally, to make Season 2."

Their quest for space rocks took them from the high desert of Chile to Sweden, to Australia and the USA. Just last week, they got to go to "a very, very secret site with very restricted access, controlled by the U.S. military," says Arnold. "We had to go through the Pentagon to be able to get in. It's something we've been working on for several months, on and off." (Season 2 of "Meteorite Men" launches Nov. 2 on the Science Channel.)

After years as meteorite hunters, they're thrilled with the increase in access that comes with the instant credibility of having a Discovery Channels show. Their production has gotten bigger, too. "We've really seen that change between Seasons 1 and 2," says Notkin. "In the first season, we shot only in North America, and there were six or seven of us in the field. For the new season, going to especially remote international locations, we'd have 12 or 14."

They also had to bring along such niceties as a chef and a shower — and freshly charged equipment. "Steve and I might not mind roughing it, but our crew doesn't want to rough it that much," he adds.

Meanwhile, Notkin and Arnold have whipped up meteorite treasure-hunting fever amongst viewers. They've had lots of offers from fans who want to serve as part of their support team. (In fact, they've delayed plans for offering meteorite adventure trips because they've been too busy with the show.)

They receive "hundreds of packages of rocks" from treasure seekers, hoping the experts will confirm genuine meteorite finds. They rarely do, but there have been a few successes.

"One was a complete new discovery from Kansas," says Arnold. "This man found an unusual rock on his large spread of farmland. We asked him to cut off a little and send it to us. He had a 70-pound meteorite that was entirely new to science."

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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