American Actress Mila Kunis

Milena Markovna "Mila" Kunis born on August 14, 1983. She is an American actress. In 1991, at the age of seven, she moved from the Ukrainian SSR to Los Angeles 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 acquiring her first significant role prior to her 15th birthday, playing Jackie Burkhart on the television series That '70s Show. Since 1999, she has voiced Meg Griffin on the animated series Family Guy.

Her breakout film role came in 2008, playing Rachel Jansen in the romantic comedy-drama Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Subsequent film roles included Mona Sax in the neo-noir action film Max Payne (2008), Solara in the post-apocalyptic neo-Western and action film The Book of Eli (2010), Jamie in the romantic comedy Friends with Benefits (2011), Lori in the comedy Ted(2012), and the Wicked Witch of the West, Theodora, in the fantasy adventure film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013). Her performance as Lily in the psychological horror film Black Swan (2010) 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.

Early Life and Education:

Kunis was born in Chernivtsi, in the Ukrainian SSR (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 named Michael (born c. 1976). 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 comes from a Jewish family 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 [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.

Career beginnings and television work: (1994–2000)

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 7th Heaven  and supporting roles in Santa with Muscles, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and the Angelina Jolie film Gia, as the young Gia Carangi

At the age of 10, Kunis auditioned for but failed to get the role of a Russian Jewish girl who moves to America in the filmMake a Wish, Molly. 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 Mac Farlane 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.  Mac Farlane called Kunis 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. Mac Farlane 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 the Family Guy Video Game!. Kunis described her character as "the scapegoat."