Mila Kunis

Milena "Mila" Kunis (Russian: Милена "Mилa" Кунис; Ukrainian: Мілена "Miлa" Куніс; born August 14, 1983; /ˈmiːlə ˈkuːnɪs/) is an American actress. At the age of seven, she moved from Ukraine to Los Angeles, California, with her family. After being enrolled in acting classes to help learn English, she was soon discovered by an agent. She appeared in TV shows and commercials, before her first significant role, playing Jackie Burkharton the TV series That '70s Show. A year later, she was cast as the voice of Meg Griffin on the animated series Family Guy.

Her breakout film role came in 2008, playing Rachel Jansen in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Subsequent film roles included Mona Sax in Max Payne, Solara in The Book of Eli, and Jamie in Friends with Benefits. Her performance as Lily in Black Swan gained her worldwide accolades, including receiving the Premio Marcello Mastroianni for Best Young Actor or Actress at the 67th Venice International Film Festival, and nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

She has received substantial media attention for her beauty, including often landing on the "Hot 100" lists for publications such as Maxim or FHM and routinely appearing on the cover of national magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar and GQ magazine. Her star status was further enhanced when she signed on to be the face of the Christian Dior Spring fashion campaign. At the age of 18, she began a relationship with actor Macaulay Culkin that lasted eight years.

Early life

Kunis was born in Chernivtsi in the Ukrainian SSR. She is the daughter of Elvira, a physics teacher who runs a pharmacy, and Mark, amechanical engineer who works as a cab driver. Kunis has an older brother, Michael. In 1991, when she was seven years old, her family moved to Los Angeles, California. Kunis is Jewish and has cited antisemitism in the former Soviet Union as one of several reasons for her family's move to the U.S. She has stated that her parents "raised me Jewish as much as they could", though religion was suppressed in the Soviet Union.

On her second day in Los Angeles, Kunis was enrolled at Rosewood Elementary School not knowing a word of English. "I blocked out second grade completely. I have no recollection of it. I always talk to my mom and my grandma about it. It was because I cried every day. I didn't understand the culture. I didn't understand the people. I didn't understand the language. My first sentence of my essay to get into college was like, 'Imagine being blind and deaf at age seven.' And that's kind of what it felt like moving to the States."

Education

In Los Angeles, she attended Hubert Howe Bancroft Middle School. She was mostly taught by an on-set tutor for her high school years while filming That '70s Show. When not on the set, she attended Fairfax High School, where she graduated in 2001. She briefly attended UCLA and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Television

At age nine, Kunis' father enrolled her in acting classes after school at the Beverly Hills Studios, where she met Susan Curtis, who would become her manager. Her first TV role was in 1994 as the young Hope Williams on an episode of the popular soap opera Days of our Lives. She had a minor role on 7th Heaven and supporting roles in Santa with Muscles, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and the Angelina Jolie film Gia, as the young Gia Carangi.

In 1998, Kunis was cast as Jackie Burkhart in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show. All who auditioned were required to be at least 18 years old; Kunis, who was 14 at the time, told the casting directors she would be 18 but did not say when. Though they eventually figured it out, the producers still thought Kunis was the best fit for the role. That '70s Show ran for eight seasons.

In 1999, Kunis replaced Lacey Chabert in the role of Meg Griffin on the animated sitcom Family Guy, created by Seth MacFarlane for Fox. Kunis won the role after auditions and a slight rewrite of the character, in part due to her performance on That '70s Show. MacFarlane called Kunis back after her first audition, instructing her to speak slower, and then told her to come back another time and enunciate more. Once she claimed that she had it under control, MacFarlane hired her. MacFarlane added: "What Mila Kunis brought to it was in a lot of ways, I thought, almost more right for the character. I say that Lacey did a phenomenal job, but there was something about Mila – something very natural about Mila. She was 15 when she started, so you were listening to a 15-year-old. Which oftentimes with animation they'll have adult actors doing the voices of teenagers and they always sound like Saturday morning voices. They sound, oftentimes, very forced. She had a very natural quality to Meg that really made what we did with that character kind of really work." Kunis was nominated for an Annie Award in the category of Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production in 2007. She also voiced Meg in the Family Guy Video Game!. Kunis described her character as "the scapegoat."

Media publicity

Kunis has attracted notable media attention for her physical appearance by various media outlets. Praise has ranged from GQ magazine naming her the Knockout of the Year for 2011  to Men's Health naming her one of the "100 Hottest Women of All-Time".  The Spike Guys' Choice Awards have honored her twice, naming her the "Hottest Mila" at the 2009 awards ceremony and in 2011 presenting her with the Holy Grail of Hot award. AskMen.com has also lauded Kunis ranking her the second most desirable woman in 2011 and following that up with a number thirteen ranking in 2012. FHM magazine ranked her number 9 on their 2012 Hot 100 list but Kunis has kept this type of media attention in perspective, saying, “You’ve got to base your career on something other than being FHM’s top 100 number one girl. Your looks are going to die out, and then what’s going to be left?” In recent years, Maxim has consistently ranked Kunis on their Hot 100 list, reaching a ranking of number 5 in both 2009 and 2011 and number 3 in 2012.

In 2007, Kunis participated in a video for the website Funny or Die appearing alongside James Franco. The video was a parody of the MTV show The Hills and was a huge success for the website, with well over one million views. Shawn Levy, director of Date Night, stated that part of what made him decide to cast Kunis with James Franco in the film was the chemistry he felt they had in the Funny or Die video. In December 2008, Kunis was featured in Gap's "Shine Your Own Star" Christmas campaign. Kunis was described as one of the "most attractive geeks" byWired.com in 2008, due to her much-publicized affinity for World of Warcraft. That same year, she was featured and on the cover of the October issue of Complex Magazine.

In 2010, she was featured in the "Women We Love" segment in Esquire with an accompanied video. For the October 2010 Elle magazine 25th anniversary special edition, Kunis was one of the women chosen to be featured for their success at a young age. The honor included a photo and video presentation on the magazine's website. Kunis was among several female stars photographed by Canadian singer/songwriter Bryan Adams in conjunction with the Calvin Klein Collections for a feature titled American Women 2010, with the proceeds from the photographs donated to the NYC AIDS foundation. Also in 2010, Kunis was featured and on the cover of the December issue of Nylon. During the summer of 2010 Kunis served with Randy Jackson as the Master of Ceremonies for the 9th Annual Chrysalis Foundation Benefit. The Chrysalis Foundation is a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization formed to help economically disadvantaged and homeless individuals to become self-sufficient through employment opportunities.

In 2011, Kunis graced the cover of the February issue of Cosmopolitan and the March issue of W magazine.For the 17th Annual Hollywood Issue of Vanity Fair, Kunis was among the actors to be chosen to appear on the cover. In support of her film Friends with Benefits she landed on the cover of Elle magazine and GQ magazine.

Christian Dior signed Kunis in 2012 to be the face of its Spring fashion campaign and she made the cover of the April issue of Harper's Bazaar.