Mila Kunis

**Milena Markovna Kunis** (born August 14, 1983) is an American actress. She began playing Jackie Burkhart on the Fox television series *That '70s Show* (1998–2006) at the age of 14. Since 1999, Kunis has voiced Meg Griffin on the Fox animated series *Family Guy.* She will reprise her role as Jackie in the upcoming series, *That '90s Show* as a special guest star.

## Early life

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. 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, California, 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 [her] 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.

In 2017, Kunis talked about her genealogical DNA test in an interview for the Israeli news website Ynet, and revealed that her ethnicity is 96% Ashkenazi Jewish.

## Career

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.

On April 30, 2022, it was announced that Kunis would have a guest appearance in the follow-up sitcom, *That '90s Show*.

## 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 April 2012. They became engaged in February 2014, and married during the first weekend of 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 had had surgery that corrected the problem. Kunis also has heterochromia iridum, a condition in which the irises are different colors. Her left eye is brown, while her right eye is green. 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.

Kunis is a supporter of the Democratic Party. In a 2012 interview, she criticized the Republican Party, saying: "The way that Republicans attack women is so offensive to me. And the way they talk about religion is offensive. I may not be a practicing Jew, but why we gotta talk about Jesus all the time?" In 2017, Kunis disclosed that she had been making monthly donations to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence's name. In April 2020, Kunis and Kutcher developed their own wine, named Quarantine Wine, with 100% of the proceeds going to 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 thirty million dollar goal as of March 18, 2022. The couple promised to donate $3 million.