The Fifth Element: Amazing Facts That You Never Knew

Milla Jovovich beat out over 3,000 women who auditioned for the role of Leeloo.

The wonder on Bruce Willis’ face when the Diva sings is real. That was the first time he’d heard it and seen the actress in full make-up.

In most shots of Gary Oldman, there is a circle around his head. In fact, a circle in the middle of the frame is a nearly constant motif in this movie. Bruce Willis, on the other hand, is more often framed by a rectangle or doorway behind him.

When composer Éric Serra showed soprano Inva Mula (who dubs the voice of the Diva) the sheet music for the Diva Dance, she reportedly smiled and relayed to him that some of the notes written were not humanly possible to achieve, because the human voice cannot change notes that fast. Hence, she performed the notes in isolation, one by one, as opposed to consecutively singing them all together, and they digitized the notes to fit the music. There are a few moments when you can hear the differences in the vocal tones of the Diva’s voice.

Many of the Mangalores aboard the Fhloston Paradise can be seen wearing “combat goggles.” This was a practical solution to hide the actors’ eyes (which were visible through the masks) and save money on make-up (contact lenses, adhesive, and coloring around the eyes).

It took a team of 80 workers five months to build the models used in this movie.

The “Divine Language” spoken by Leeloo was invented by co-writer and director Luc Besson, and further refined by Milla Jovovich, who had little trouble learning and developing it, as she was already fluent in four languages. The language had only 400 words. He and Milla Jovovich held conversations and wrote letters to each other in the language as practice. By the end of filming, they were able to have full conversations in this language.

Luc Besson wrote this story in high school and made the hero a taxi driver because his own father worked a second job as a taxi driver. He did this to support Luc going to art school. Luc has a taxi driver in almost all of his movies to honor his father.

At the time, it was the most expensive movie ever produced outside of Hollywood, most expensive production in Gaumont’s history, and at $80 million USD, the visual effects budget of the movie was the highest of its time.

According to the Ultimate Edition DVD, Prince and Michael Jackson were sources of inspiration for the part of Ruby Rhod, and both were even considered for the role, with Prince being the first choice. He reportedly declined as he found the costumes too “outlandish,” and Chris Tucker got the part instead. Tucker claimed that the secrecy around the script was so high that not even he knew how the character was supposed to be played, but the outlandish costumes actually helped him get into character. As a result, many of the reactions of other actors to his performance were quite genuine.

Bruce Willis spoke favorably of this movie in a 1999 interview, concluding “it was a real fun movie to make.” Chris Tucker and Milla Jovovich also spoke favorably of both their experiences making this movie and working with Luc Besson. In interviews on the Ultimate Edition DVD, Jovovich described Besson as “the first really amazing director I had worked with.”

Luc Besson demanded that most of the action shots in the movie take place in broad daylight, as he was reportedly tired of the dark spaceship corridors and dimly lit planets common in science fiction movies, and wanted a brighter “cheerfully crazy” look as opposed to a gloomy, realistic one.