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MILA
Mila Kunis Biography
Unless you live under a rock, you most probably know who Mila Kunis is. Mila Kunis is a 29 years actress and voice artist. She has one brother, Michael, and is the daughter of Elvira and Mark Kunis. You may know her from her recent movie Ted with co-star Mark Wahlberg.
Milena "Mila" Markovna Kunis born August 14, 1983 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 as an after-school activity, she was soon discovered by an agent. She appeared in several television series and commercials, before her first significant role, playing Jackie Burkhart on the television 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, Jamie in Friends with Benefits, and Lori in Ted. 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 looks, 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 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.] 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 a brother, Michael, who is six years older than she. She stated in 2011 that her parents had "amazing jobs", and that the family was "very lucky" and "not poor"; they had decided to leave the USSR because they saw "no future" there for Kunis and her brother. In 1991, when she was seven years old, her family moved to Los Angeles, California with $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 LA.”
Kunis is Jewish and has cited antisemitism in the former 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. "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 used an on-set tutor for most of her high school years while filming That '70s Show. When not on the set, she attended Fairfax High School, from which she graduated in 2001. She briefly attended UCLA and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Career
TELEVISION
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. 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 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, Mila was cast as Jackie Burkhart in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show. All who auditioned were required to be at least 18 years old; Milena, 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 she was the best fit for the role. That '70s Show ran for eight seasons.
In 1999, Mila replaced Lacey Chabert in the role of Meg Griffin on the animated sitcom Family Guy, created by Seth MacFarlane for Fox. Mila won the role after auditions and a slight rewrite of the character, in part due to her performance on That '70s Show. MacFarlane called Mila back after her first audition, instructing her to speak slower, and then told her to come back another time and enunciate more. Upon claiming that she had mastered these speech particulars, 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. Often times with animation they'll have adult actors doing the voices of teenagers and they always sound like Saturday morning voices. They sound often times very forced. She had a very natural quality to Meg that really made what we did with that character kind of really work." Mila 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!. Mila described her character as "the scapegoat."
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 stand alone sequel to the 2000 film American Psycho. American Psycho 2 was panned by critics, and later, Mila herself expressed embarrassment over the film. In 2004, Kunis starred in the film adaptation Tony n' Tina's Wedding. Although the film was shot in 2004, it did not have a theatrical release until 2007. Most critics did not like the film, which mustered a 25% approval from Rotten Tomatoes. DVD talk concluded that "fans would be much better off pretending the movie never happened in the first place".
In 2005, Mila co-starred with Jon Heder in Moving McAllister, which was not released theatrically until 2007. The film received generally poor reviews and had a limited two week run in theaters. She followed up with After Sex starring alongside Zoe Saldana. In October 2006, she began filming Boot Camp (originally titled Straight Edge). The film was not released in theatres in the United States, but was released on DVD on August 25, 2009.
Mila starred as Rachel Jansen in the 2008 comedy film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, co-produced by Judd Apatow. The role, which she won after unsuccessfully auditioning for Knocked Up, entailed improvisation on her part. The film garnered positive reviews, and was a commercial success, grossing $105 million worldwide. Mila's performance was well-received; Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal praised her "fresh beauty and focused energy", while James Berardinelli wrote that she is "adept with her performance and understands the concept of comic timing." She was nominated for a Teen Choice Award. In an interview, Mila credited Apatow with helping her to expand her career from That '70s Show.
Also in 2008, she portrayed Mona Sax, an assassin, alongside Mark Wahlberg in the action film Max Payne, based on the video game of the same name. She underwent training with guns, in boxing, and in martial arts in preparation for her role. Max Payne was relatively successful at the box office, grossing $85 million worldwide but was panned by critics, with several reviewers calling Mila miscast. Travis Estvold of Boise Weekly wrote that she's "horribly miscast as some sort of undersized, warble-voiced crime boss". Director John Moore defended his choice of Mila 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.