Milena "Mila" Kunis ( /ˈmiːlə ˈkuːnɪs/; born Milena Markivna Kunis (Ukrainian: Мілена Марківна Куніс)/Milena Markovna Kunis (Russian: Милена Маркοвна Кунис)[1] on August 14, 1983) is an American actress. Her television work includes the role of Jackie Burkhart on That '70s Show and the voice of Meg Griffin on the animated series Family Guy. She has also played roles in film, such as Rachel Jansen in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Mona Sax in Max Payne and Solara in The Book of Eli. In 2010, she won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor or Actress at the 67th Venice International Film Festival for her performance as Lily in Black Swan. She was also nominated 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 for the same role.
Early life
Mila Kunis was born in Chernivtsi,[2] in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union, to a Jewish family.[3][4] Her mother, Elvira, is a physics teacher and drug store manager, and her father, Mark Kunis, is a mechanical engineer and cab company executive. She has an older brother, Michael. Her family moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1991.[3]
Kunis has stated that a lottery system allowed her family to make the move: "It took about five years. If you got chosen the first time around, you went to Moscow, where there was another lottery, and you maybe got chosen again. Then you could come to the States." On her second day in Los Angeles, she was enrolled at Rosewood Elementary School not knowing a word of English. "I blocked out second grade," she says. "I don’t remember, but my mom tells me that I came home and cried every day. I wasn’t that traumatized. It was just a shock."[5] Kunis added: "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."[6]
Despite reports to the contrary, Kunis did not learn English from watching The Price Is Right.[7] 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.
Career
Television
At age nine, Kunis took acting classes after school at the Beverly Hills Studios, where she met her first and still current manager Susan Curtis. Said Kunis: "My parents told her, 'Listen, we can’t afford head shots; we can’t afford anything. We can’t take her to auditions because we work full-time.' ... [Curtis] said, 'Don’t worry. I’ll fix everything,' and she did. I ended up getting the first thing I went out for, which was a Barbie commercial. All my parents said was, 'You can do whatever you want to do as long as you get A's and stay in school.'"[10] Kunis began appearing in print-ads, catalogues, and TV commercials for children's products like Lisa Frank products, Mattel's Barbie, and Payless Shoes. She also modeled for a Guess girls' clothing campaign. Her first TV role was as the young Hope Williams on an episode of the popular soap opera Days of our Lives.[11] She had a minor role on 7th Heaven as Lucy's nemesis and supporting roles in Santa with Muscles, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and the Angelina Jolie film Gia, as Gia Carangi's younger self.
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’d be 18 but didn't say when. Though they eventually figured it out, the producers still thought Kunis was the best fit for the role.[3][10] That '70s Show ran for eight seasons, becoming the second longest-running live-action sitcom on Fox (after Married with Children).[12] Kunis expressed some frustration with working on one show for so long. "Eight years of doing the same [show] felt like being behind a desk, and I lost my drive," she says. However, she quickly "had an epiphany. I decided I wasn't going to take my career so seriously and make my job who I am. I just want to be happy with my life.
Kunis on a panel for Family Guy at the 2009 Comic Con in San Diego.
In 1999, Kunis replaced Lacey Chabert in the role of Meg Griffin on the animated television sitcom Family Guy,[13] created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series plot centers on a family called the Griffins, a dysfunctional family. The series starred MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth Green and Mike Henry. Kunis won the role after auditions and a slight rewrite of the character, in part due to her performance on That '70s Show.[14] 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.[14] 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."[15] Kunis was nominated for an Annie Award in the category of Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production in 2007.[16] She also voiced Meg in the Family Guy Video Game!.
Kunis described her character as "the scapegoat." She further explained, "Meg gets picked on a lot. But it's funny. It's like the middle child. She is constantly in the state of being an awkward 14-year-old, when you're kind of going through puberty and what-not. She's just in perpetual mode of humiliation. And it's fun.
Film work 2001 - 2008
In 2001, she appeared in Get Over It opposite Kirsten Dunst. She followed that up in 2002 by starring in the straight-to-DVD horror film American Psycho 2 alongside William Shatner, a sequel to the 2000 film American Psycho. American Psycho 2 was panned by critics;[18] later, Kunis herself expressed embarrassment over the film.[19]
In 2004 Kunis starred in Tony n' Tina's Wedding. Although the film was shot in 2004, it did not have a theatrical release until 2007.[20] Most critics didn't like the film, which mustered a 25% approval from Rotten Tomatoes.[21] DVD talk concluded that "fans would be much better off pretending the movie never happened in the first place".[22]
In 2005 Kunis co-starred with Jon Heder in Moving McAllister, which was not released theatrically until 2007.[23] The film received generally poor reviews and had a limited two week run in theaters.[24][25] She followed up with After Sex playing alongside her Get Over It costar Zoe Saldana.[26] In October 2006 she began filming Boot Camp (originally titled Straight Edge).[27] Although the film did not have a theatrical release in the United States, it was released on DVD on August 25, 2009.[28]
Kunis starred as Rachel Jansen in the 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, co-produced by Judd Apatow. The role, which she attained after unsuccessfully auditioning for Knocked Up,[29] entailed improvisation on her part.[30] The film garnered positive reviews,[31] and was a commercial success, grossing $105 million worldwide.[32] Kunis's performance was well-received; Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal praised her "fresh beauty and focused energy",[33] while James Berardinelli wrote that she is "adept with her performance and understands the concept of comic timing".[34] She was nominated for a Teen Choice Award.[35] In an interview, Kunis credited Apatow with helping her to expand her career from That ‘70s Show.[29]
Also in 2008, she portrayed Mona Sax, a Russian assassin, alongside Mark Wahlberg in the action movie Max Payne, based on the video game of the same name. Kunis underwent training in guns, boxing, and martial arts for her role.[36][37] Max Payne was relatively successful at the box office, grossing $85 million worldwide[38] but was panned by critics[39] with several reviewers calling Kunis miscast.[40][41][42] Director John Moore defended his choice of Kunis, saying, "Mila just bowled us over...She wasn't an obvious choice, but she just wears Mona so well. We needed someone who would not be just a fop or foil to Max; we needed somebody who had to be that character and convey her own agenda. I think Mila's just knocked it out of the park."[37] She was nominated for another Teen Choice Award for her role in the film.
2009 - present
In 2009, she appeared in the comedy Extract with Ben Affleck and Jason Bateman. The film received mostly positive reviews,[44] and grossed $10.8 million at the box office.[45] Roger Ebert, while criticizing Extract for not being believable, wrote that Kunis "brings her role to within shouting distance of credibility."[46] Director Mike Judge commented that part of what was surprising to learn about Kunis was her ability to make references to the cult animation film Rejected. Judge said: "As beautiful as Mila is, you could believe that maybe she would cross paths with you in the real world."[47] After seeing Kunis perform in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Judge wanted to cast her in the role of Cindy in Extract: "I just thought, 'Wow, this girl’s perfect.' And she really wanted to do it, which was fantastic." Said Kunis, "I’m a huge fan of Mike Judge's from Office Space, so I was, like, 'Okay, this is a very easy decision.' I told them I would do anything needed to be in this production – like craft service, or, say, acting."[48]
In 2010, she starred alongside Denzel Washington in the action film The Book of Eli. Although the film received mixed reviews,[49] it has performed well at the box office grossing over $157 million worldwide.[50] Film critic Richard Roeper praised Kunis's performance calling it a "particularly strong piece of work".[51] Several other reviews were equally positive of her performance, including Pete Hammond of Boxoffice magazine, who wrote that she's "ideally cast in the key female role"[52] Even reviewers who did not necessarily like the film complimented her performance, such as James Berardinelli, who stated that "the demands of the role prove to be within her range, which is perhaps surprising considering she has been thus far pigeonholed into more lightweight parts"[53] and Colin Covert of the Star Tribune who wrote that she "generated a spark and brought a degree of determination to her character, developing an independent female character who’s not always in need of rescuing."[54] Some critics, however, called her miscast.[55][56][57] Kunis received another Teen Choice Award nomination for her performance.[58][59]
Kunis was also cast in a minor role in the 2010 comedy Date Night, starring Tina Fey and Steve Carell.[60] She garnered several positive reviews for her performance.[61][62][63][64]
She and Natalie Portman played rival ballet dancers in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. Kunis, who was cast in the film based on her performance in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and on the recommendation of costar Natalie Portman,[65] underwent a training regimen that included cardiovascular exercise, a 1200-calorie a day diet (she lost twenty pounds that she regained after filming ended), and ballet classes for four hours a day, seven days a week.[66][67][68] The film premiered as the opening film at the 67th Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2010[69] and had a premium screening at the 35th Toronto International Film Festival on September 13.[70] Its initial limited release in select theaters began on December 3, 2010.[71] Reviews of Kunis's performance have been positive,[72][73][74] with Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter stating, "Kunis makes a perfect alternate to Portman, equally as lithe and dark but a smirk of self-assurance in place of Portman's wide-eyed fearfulness."[75] Guy Lodge of In Contention praises Kunis saying, "it’s the cool, throaty-voiced Kunis who is the surprise package here, intelligently watching and reflecting her co-star in such a manner that we’re as uncertain as Nina of her ingenuousness."[76] Kunis's performance won her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor or Actress at the 67th Venice International Film Festival,[77] and earned her Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress.
Kunis was cast alongside Justin Timberlake in the romantic comedy Friends with Benefits, which filmed from July to September 2010 in New York City and Los Angeles.[78] Director Will Gluck stated that he wrote the story with Kunis and Timberlake in mind. "There were a couple of actors I wanted to work with, so I wrote it for Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. I wanted to do more of an adult movie about sex, too, and about relationships
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