We have an update on one of Milla Jovovich’s most recent supported causes, the Montblanc “Signature for Good” UNICEF Charity Initiative, the gala benefit for which she attended on February 20 2009 in Los Angeles, CA, alongside such celebrity names as Christina Ricci, Reese Witherspoon, Dita Von Teese, Eva Longoria and Sienna Miller.

Kicking things off with new media, another three medium-res portraits of a beautiful Milla Jovovich as Esmeralda of Victor Hugo’s famous literaly classic Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) have been added to the gallery, courtesy of Montblanc. Don’t forget to also check out our extensive photo- and video footage from last Friday’s event at our archives, with new additions being uploaded as they are found.

Meanwhile, Montblanc has launched a new website for the initiative at SignatureForGood.com, with more information on the cause, its history and the key players. Here are Milla’s motivations for supporting the cause, as transcribed by MillaFan.com from their website:

“I have been very active with programs that could potentially help people. Be it through education, financial aid or promoting a great cause, I want to know that I was able to change people’s lives for the better in any way possible. The Signature for Good charity initiative happens to be very close to my heart as I am a connsummate reader and truly believe that reading and appreciating literature is one of the surest ways for people to reach their full potential as human beings.

This is the first time I have worked so closely and directly with UNICEF.

My passion for encouraging literacy started when I was very young! A close friend of my family was a professor who taught history in college. I would go stay with him at his ranch house in Sacramento when I was a kid for my Summer vacations and he would always have fellow professors at his house during the day, where they would all sit and have these really incredible (and long winded!) discussions about everything from physics and the meaning of life, to politics and social concerns. They were very dynamic and a lot of fun, even for a child of eight! Well, one of the closest friends of my Uncle Alex (as I would call him my whole life, though we have no actual biological kinship) was a Greek mythology professor and I just happened to be one of the most mythologically literate eight year olds you could hope to find. A fact my uncle hid from this guy because he thought it would be a real laugh to ask him to have a Greek mythology contest with me and for them to bet money on it! The story ends with me winning the contest and my uncle being fifty dollars richer, besides having a great story to tell everyone about his eight year old niece who beat a college professor in his own field of expertise! I think the pride I felt after this episode set up the rest of my life in the belief that people need to be educated, to read books and lose themselves in the incredible worlds that only great writing can open up to us. The pleasure that reading has given me, I have always wished that others could experience and tried to get all my friends to read the books that I loved. So in a way, anyone who has ever really known me will definitely have a few books that I have pushed on them!

I felt that a charity initiative to promote literacy has to be one of the most important causes one could be involved with and as a mother, I truly want young people to be able to reach their full potential by learning to read and appreciate the beauty of good writing.

I feel incredibly lucky to be literate in just one language! But, being able to speak Russian is so important for me — though I don’t read it very well — to remember my roots and be able to make sure that my daughter grows up understanding her heritage and being able to communicate with Russian people. But, she has inspired be to learn to read Russian better than I have till now, so I have been reading all the old Russian stories, poems and fairy tales to her since she was born and I do feel very lucky to be able to do even that. I would have to say that the most important letter — or letters — that I have ever written would be the ones I have been writing to my daughter since before she was born and before every trip I take that she cannot come with me on. I hope that through them, she will be able to read about how much I adore her and how certain special moments we have spent together have made me feel about my own life. I feel that through writing we can record things that might be forgotten later and because they are written in the moment, they have a sense of urgency and immediacy that might not be there when we remember and write them at a later time. The most important letter that I have ever received would have to be the one that my little brother wrote to me when he was about 16 years old. It was the most touching and beautiful letter anyone had ever sent me, because of how special he made me feel about being a big sister to him. It was so thoughtful and sensitive that I was absolutely bawling reading it. It is something that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

EVER is the most important and meaningful word to me, because it is the name of my only child.

My mother taught me to read and she always spent so much time with me and my education. I definitely knew how to read before I went to school. I think the book that reminds me the most of my childhood is a Russian book which my mother read to me so much that I could recite it word for word by the time I was two years old. We even have cassettes that my mom recorded of me doing it. It is a long children’s poem about a little boy who hates to wash and he gets so yucky that nothing in the house wants to be close to him, the blanket on his bed runs away from him as do the pancakes he wants to eat and the pants and shirt and shoes are so scared to be worn by him that they hide. Finally the washbasin from his mother’s room comes out and raises his army of brushes, sponges, soaps and combs to convince him of how horrible it is not to be clean. It is the most incredible poem and it is a classic in Russian children’s books. I can’t wait till my daughter and I can sit and read it together!”

Updated Photo Albums:

• Advertisement Campaigns > Montblanc “Signature for Good” UNICEF Initiative (2009)