Milla Jovovich threatened to quit the first 'Resident Evil' film when Michelle Rodriguez joined the cast.

Milla Jovovich

Milla Jovovich

The 41-year-old actress first appeared in the franchise - based on the hugely popular video game series of the same name - in 2002, but she almost missed out on a defining role after she was furious over what she saw as her character Alice being marginalised in favour of her co-star's alter ego Rain.

She told Inverse.com: "I almost quit the movie... I was shooting something else, and [director] Paul [W.S. Anderson] had hired Michelle Rodriguez to play Rain.

"And 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. So 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 Alice. And then Alice became this tag-along."

She read the revised version of the script on a flight to Germany, and by the time she landed in Berlin she was "livid" over the changes.

Jovovich is now married to Anderson, and she had credited these frank discussions with being the start of their blossoming and long-lasting romance.

She added: "He was like, 'What do you mean? This didn't change that much?' So I was like, 'OK, why don't we start with page one?'

"I pointed out every time I felt like my great scenes were taken away. That was how we started our relationship."

The couple married in 2009, and together they have daughters Ever, nine, and two-year-old Dashiel.