Friends With Benefits, Family Guy, Black Swan, and That '70s Show star, Mila Kunis, has come such a long way from her iconic character, Jackie. Nowadays, she's a mother, a philanthropist, and of course, a wildly talented and experienced actress.
But there is a lot more to Mila than meets the eye! Here are some interesting facts about her that you may not know.
At the age of seven, she and her family moved from Chernivtsi Ukraine to the United States.
Because she and her family are Jewish, they felt unsafe in Ukraine due to the rising anti-Semitic tide at the time.
"My parents went through hell and back," Mila told Glamour. "They came to America with suitcases and a family of seven and $250, and that’s it. My parents, for years, worked full-time and went to college full-time. They would go to night school to learn English."
"My dad worked—[expletive] if I know—seven jobs? He painted a house. He would deliver toilets. He drove a cab, delivered pizzas. Whatever he could do, he did."
While we've come to know her by her stage name, so to speak, "Mila" is not her given, legal name.
Her full name is actually Milena Markovna Kunis. Definitely sounds more in line with her heritage!
"I don’t wear makeup. I don’t wash my hair every day. It’s not something that I associate with myself," she told Glamour. "I commend women who wake up 30, 40 minutes early to put on eyeliner. I think it’s beautiful."
"So to go to a shoot and have my makeup artist put on face cream and send me off to do a photo, I was like, 'Well, this makes life easy.' And you’re still protected. Nobody’s there to make you look bad."
She was offered the job after being referred by Black Swan alum, Natalie Portman, and one very important Skype conversation!
Talk about good luck!
Mila was 14 years old when she auditioned for the show, so by season two, she was 16 and in need of a decent driving instructor.
Thankfully, her older castmate, Wilmer, stepped up to the plate!
"I give Judd Apatow so much love for hiring me and letting me do something different, letting me break free of That ‘70s Show, letting me show that I could do something outside of Jackie," she told Orlando Sentinel.
"The hardest thing, after ending a show you’ve been on for eight years is you get pigeon-holed into that character or that type of humor. The character and the show you played her on IS you, to Hollywood."
It was called Sunset Beach. "I wanted that one [Sunset Beach] because it had cute guys in it," she told George Lopez.
She ended up being offered both roles, and ultimately, with the help of her manager, she made the right choice!
“I’d rather be in love and have a baby than have a movie," she told Glamour. "I got—knock on wood—very lucky. But I did choose. I took a chunk of time off. If it were up to [Ashton], we would have had kids much sooner. But I had contracts for films I had to do."
"And let me tell you, when I would get a call with an offer, I wouldn’t even flinch. I was like, 'No, I’m pregnant.' 'No, I have a baby.' I wasn’t ready to go back. I was so happy saying no that I knew it was the right decision."
"We can’t [expletive] each other. I literally can’t lie to him. He can call me out on everything, and I can do the same, because there’s nothing about the other person’s face that we don’t know. We know when they’re acting, thus we know when they’re lying. Sometimes he’ll look at me, be like, 'Really?' And I’m like, '[expletive],'" she told Glamour.
Ironically, Mila stars in a movie called Friends With Benefits and Ashton stars in a movie called No Strings Attached, and yet, they still thought they could pull it off without accidentally falling in love.
"It’s weird. It doesn’t matter if you’re play-pretending crying or play-pretending laughing, you’re still play-pretending," she told Glamour.
"It’s equally as hard or easy. It’s not like, “Oh man, I’m doing a movie where I have to cry, that means I’m working really hard.”
