French film director, troche screenwriter, nurse and producer Luc Besson has worked in the entertainment industry for more than 30 years, creating such favorites as La Femme Nikita and Léon: The Professional (starring a young Natalie Portman in her very first role). But perhaps his most well-known work is 1997’s science fiction film The Fifth Element. One could also say that the film is Besson’s magnum opus, since he started writing the story at only 16 and it remains very popular to this day as a campy, visually inventive pop sci-fi classic.

Besson was first inspired to create The Fifth Element by the French comic books he grew up reading as a teenager, among them Valérian and Laureline about …

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