Mila Kunis is an American actress. Born in Chernivtsi, and raised in Los Angeles, she began playing Jackie Burkhart on the Fox television series That ’70s Show (1998–2006) at the age of 14. Since 1999, she has voiced Meg Griffin on the Fox animated series Family Guy.
Early Life
Milena Markovna Kunis was born into a Ukrainian-Jewish family on August 14, 1983, in Chernivtsi, a city in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union (now Ukraine). Her mother, Elvira, is a physics teacher who runs a pharmacy, and her father, Mark Kunis, is a mechanical engineer who works as a cab driver. Kunis has an elder brother, Michael. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Her mother tongue and the common language within her family is Russian. While participating in Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Kunis confirmed she does not speak Ukrainian, stating Russian was the main language at the time she was there. Children were not taught Ukrainian in school until they were in second grade which was the time she left to come to the United States. She stated in 2011 that her parents had “amazing jobs”, and that she “was very lucky” and the family was “not poor”; they had decided to leave the Soviet Union because they saw “no future” there for Mila and her brother. In 1991, when she was 7 years old, her family moved to Los Angeles, with US$250. “That was all we were allowed to take with us. My parents had given up good jobs and degrees, which were not transferable. We arrived in New York on a Wednesday and by Friday morning my brother and I were at school in L.A.”
Kunis comes from a Jewish family and has cited antisemitism in the Soviet Union as one of several reasons for her family’s move to the United States. She has stated that her parents “raised Jewish as much as they could”, although 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. She later recalled: “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.”
In Los Angeles, she attended Hubert Howe Bancroft Middle School. She used an on-set tutor for most of her high school years while filming That ’70s Show. She briefly attended Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES), but when that school proved to be insufficiently flexible about her acting commitments, she transferred to Fairfax High School, graduating in 2001. She briefly attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Kunis has said that a genealogical DNA test described her ethnicity as 96% to 98% Ashkenazi Jewish.
Career
At age nine, Kunis was enrolled by her father in acting classes after school at the Beverly Hills Studios, where she met Susan Curtis, who would become her manager. On her first audition she landed the role for a Barbie commercial. Shortly after, she did a commercial for the Lisa Frank product line. Her first television roles took place in 1994, first appearing on Days of Our Lives, and a few months later doing her first of two appearances on Baywatch. She had a minor role on the television shows 7th Heaven, and Walker, Texas Ranger as well as supporting roles in the films Santa with Muscles, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and the Angelina Jolie film Gia, as the young Gia Carangi.
At the age of 10, Kunis unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of a Russian Jewish girl who moves to America in the film Make a Wish, Molly (weird..right?). Instead, she was cast in the secondary role of a Mexican girl. 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. She won two consecutive Young Star Awards as Best Young Actress in a Comedy TV Series in 1999 and 2000 for her performances.
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. When Kunis auditioned for the role, she was called back by MacFarlane, who instructed her to speak slower. He 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. 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 Family Guy Video Game!, released in 2006. Kunis described her character as “the scapegoat.”
Kunis’s breakout film role came in 2008, playing Rachel in the romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall.The film garnered positive reviews, and was a commercial success, grossing $105 million worldwide. She was nominated for a Teen Choice Award.
Also in 2008, Kunis portrayed Mona Sax, an assassin, alongside Mark Wahlberg in the action film Max Payne, based on the video game of the same name. Kunis underwent training in guns, boxing, and martial arts for her role. Max Payne was relatively successful at the box office, grossing $85 million worldwide but was poorly reviewed by critics, with several reviewers calling Kunis miscast. Travis Estvold of Boise Weekly wrote that she was “horribly miscast as some sort of undersized, warble-voiced crime boss”. 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 just knocked it out of the park.” She was nominated for another Teen Choice Award for her role in the film.
In 2009, she appeared in the comedy film Extract with Ben Affleck and Jason Bateman. The film received mostly positive reviews,and grossed $10.8 million at the box office.
In 2010, she starred alongside Denzel Washington in the action film The Book of Eli. Although the film received mixed reviews, it performed well at the box office, grossing over $157 million worldwide.Film critic Richard Roeper praised Kunis’s performance, calling it a “particularly strong piece of work”.
Kunis was nominated for multiple awards, including her first Golden Globe, for the 2010 film Black Swan. She played a rival ballet dancer to the main character, played by Natalie Portman. Director Darren Aronofsky cast Kunis in the film based on her performance in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and on the recommendation of co-star and close friend Natalie Portman. She underwent a training regimen that included cardiovascular exercise, a 1,200-calorie a day diet (she lost 20 pounds that she regained after filming ended), and ballet classes for four hours a day, seven days a week. During the demanding production, she suffered injuries including a torn ligament and a dislocated shoulder.
Black Swan received widespread acclaim from critics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film grossed over $106.9 million in the United States and Canada while grossing over $329 million worldwide. Reviews of Kunis’s performance were positive, 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.” Guy Lodge of In Contention also praised 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.”Kunis’s performance won her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor or Actress at the 67th Venice International Film Festival, and earned her Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress. At the 37th annual Saturn Awards, she was also honored with the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance.
In 2013, Kunis played Theodora, the youngest of three witches, opposite James Franco, in the Walt Disney Pictures’ prequel, Oz the Great and Powerful. She dedicated her performance in the film to Margaret Hamilton, the original Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film. The film, and Kunis’s performance, received mixed reviews from critics.
Kunis was cast alongside Justin Timberlake in the 2011 romantic comedy Friends with Benefits. Director Will Gluck stated that he wrote the story with Kunis and Timberlake in mind. Friends with Benefits achieved success at the box office, grossing over $149 million worldwide, and received mostly positive reviews with critics praising the chemistry between Kunis and Timberlake. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that “Ms. Kunis is fast proving that she’s a gift that keeps giving to mainstream romantic comedy” and “her energy is so invigorating and expansive and her presence so vibrant that she fills the screen”.
In 2012, Kunis co-starred with Mark Wahlberg in Ted, her most commercially successful film to date. The film was directed and co-written by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. Kunis played the girlfriend of Wahlberg’s character. When MacFarlane first conceived the project, he considered Kunis too young for the role. However, the film remained in development for several years and when it was finally ready to begin production, he ended up casting her. Ted has received generally positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing $549 million worldwide. Drew McWeeny of HitFix wrote that Kunis “brings some lovely subtle grace notes to a role that easily could have just been ‘the pushy girlfriend'”.
Also in 2013, Kunis co-starred in the crime thriller Blood Ties with Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, and Marion Cotillard. The film premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and had a limited release in the United States in 2014. Blood Ties received mixed reviews.
Kunis co-starred with Kristen Bell and Christina Applegate in the comedy Bad Moms, which was released July 29, 2016. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the cast and humor, though did not feel it could “take full advantage of its assets”. Chris Nashawaty from Entertainment Weekly wrote that “Kunis manages to be both sympathetic and funny, and she has crack comedic timing”. The film went on to earn more than $183.9 million with a budget of $20 million. Following the financial success of Bad Moms, STX Entertainment reunited Kunis with her co-stars Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn for a sequel, A Bad Moms Christmas, which was released on November 1, 2017. It went on to receive mixed reviews and gross over $130 million worldwide with a budget of $28 million.
In 2018, Kunis co-starred with Kate McKinnon in the comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me. The film received mixed reviews and went on to gross over $75 million worldwide with a budget of $40 million. Kunis co-starred with Glenn Close in the film Four Good Days. Principal photography began in September 2019 in Los Angeles, and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2020. In 2021, she co-starred with Allison Janney and Regina Hall in Breaking News in Yuba County, which was filmed in Mississippi. The film was released February 12, 2021, and received negative reviews from critics. On April 30, 2022, it was announced that Kunis would have a guest appearance in the follow-up sitcom, That ’90s Show.
- Fun Fact: Kunis has heterochromia iridum, a condition in which the irises are different colors. Her left eye is brown, while her right eye is green.
Personal Life
Kunis began dating actor Macaulay Culkin in 2002. During their relationship, there were rumors of the couple getting married, but Kunis denied them.On January 3, 2011, Kunis’s publicist confirmed reports that Kunis and Culkin had ended their relationship, saying, “The split was amicable, and they remain close friends.”
Kunis began dating her former That ’70s Show co-star Ashton Kutcher in 2012.They became engaged in February 2014, and were married in July 2015 in Oak Glen, California. The couple have two children: a daughter born in October 2014 and a son born in November 2016. The family resides in a sustainable farmhouse, designed by the couple and architect Howard Backen, in Beverly Hills.
In January 2011, she revealed her struggle with chronic iritis that had caused temporary blindness in one eye. Some months earlier she went through with the surgery that corrected the problem. On September 14, 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced it was investigating the alleged hacking of Kunis’s cellphone and email accounts, along with those of other celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson and Vanessa Hudgens. Christopher Chaney from Jacksonville, Florida, later pleaded guilty in federal court to nine counts of computer hacking.
In November 2011, Kunis was escorted by Sgt. Scott Moore to a U.S. Marine Corps Ball in Greenville, North Carolina. She had accepted Moore’s invitation in July after he posted it as a YouTube video while serving with the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The event celebrated the Marine Corps’ 236th anniversary.
In 2016, Kunis, while pregnant with her second child, undertook the surprise renovation of her parents’ condominium, over a six-week period, which was documented for My HouzzTV. She had grown up in the ‘condo’ from the age of 9, with her older brother and her hard working parents. In April 2020, Kunis and Kutcher developed their own wine, named Quarantine Wine, with 100% of the proceeds going to give aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following year they launched Outside Wine, a blend of red wine, whose profits would benefit The Skate Park Project and Thorn.org.
In 2022, Kunis and Kutcher started a gofundme page to help two online companies (Airbnb and Flexport) to aid refugees fleeing the violence in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They exceeded their $30 million dollar goal as of March 18, 2022. The couple promised to donate $3 million of their own money to the cause.
Net Worth
Mila Kunis is a Ukrainian-born actress who has a net worth of $75 million.
The principal Family Guy voice actors each earn $100,000 per episode. That works out to around $2 million per year, per actor. They can earn additional royalties from the sale of DVDs, merchandise and syndication deals
In 2008 Mila paid $2.9 million for a home in the Laurel Canyon area of LA. In 2002 she paid $540,000 for a condo in West Hollywood.
In May 2014 Ashton and Mila paid $10.2 million for a home in Beverly Hills. They listed the home in 2020 for a little under $14 million. They ultimately accepted $10.35 million in January 2022.
In June 2017 they paid $10 million for a beachfront home in Carpinteria, California, near Santa Barbara. The property is made up of two houses spread across a combined 3,100-square-feet of interior living space.
Their primary home is a 6-acre property in Beverly Hills that was photographed for Architectural Digest in August 2021.
