Mila Kunis was only 14 years old when she landed the role that made her famous in the hit comedy "That 70's Show." That young girl is not so young anymore: this week she celebrated her 40th birthday, she is a family woman and is married to another big star, Ashton Kutcher, and together they make up one of the most photogenic and entertaining couples in Hollywood.
Read more:
Kunis' given name is Milena - she was born in 1983 in Soviet Ukraine to a Jewish family; her grandfathers were Holocaust survivors, most of whose family members perished in the Nazi death camps; her mother was a physics teacher and manager of a drug store; and her father was a mechanical engineer.
Her family, like the rest of the Jewish community in that country, suffered from antisemitic persecution and Kunis told The Sun in an interview: "One of my friends had swastikas painted on her bag and notebooks. This is a country that doesn't want you as a Jew."
When she was seven, her parents decided to try to find a better home, and moved to Los Angeles, with very few possessions but a lot of hope. "My parents wanted us to have a future, and at that time in the Soviet Union there was no future. All we were allowed to take with us was $250. My parents gave up good jobs and their degrees," she said.
Kunis, then entering the second grade, arrived at her new school speaking only Russian and not knowing a word of English. "I repressed this period completely. My mother told me that I cried non-stop. I didn't know the people, the customs, the language and the society. Imagine what it's like to be blind and deaf at the age of seven, that's roughly how it felt," she told Ynet.
To try to help their daughter fit in, her parents enrolled her in an acting club - and not only did it help her find her place, it completely changed her life. In this club she was noticed by Susan Curtis , an actor's agent who recognized Kunis' potential. The agent took 10-year-old Mila under her wing and sent her to audition for a Barbie commercial. It was her first audition - and she got the part.
If anyone thought it was just beginner's luck, Kunis proved them wrong because she quickly became a very busy actress with a long line of roles, starting with guest roles in series like "Days of Our Lives," "Seventh Heaven" and "Baywatch" to movies like " Santa With Muscles" alongside the boxer Hulk Hogan , the sequel to "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids", and "Gia", starring Angelina Jolie, where she played Jolie's character in her youth.
Ironically, she was not chosen for the role of a Jewish girl who moves from Russia to the US.
One of the sexiest women in the world
Her big break came with the series "That 70's Show." In order to get the audition, the 14-year-old Kunis twisted the truth a little and told the producers that she would soon turn 18 - but she didn't say how soon. In the end, the producers found out how young she was, but she had already won their hearts and they didn't want to give her up.
The series was broadcast starting in 1998 for eight seasons and there she of course met the man who would become her husband and the father of her children, Ashton Kutcher . Their characters were also a couple in the series, but it took a few more good years before reality imitated fiction.
The 14-year-old Kunis twisted the truth a little and told the producers that she would soon turn 18 - but she didn't say how soon. In the end, the producers found out how young she was
In the meantime, her resume was filled with a variety of roles, on the big screen in fact - "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", "Black Swan", "Friends With Benefits", "Oz The Great and Powerful" and "Bad Mothers" are only a small part of her film work, while on television she has been dubbing the character of Meg Griffin in the animated series "Family Guy" for 20 seasons and recently also starred in the Netflix movie "The Luckiest Girl in the World."
She also found herself appearing in several rankings of the sexiest women in the world, and even took first place in 2012 in a parade organized by Esquire magazine. When the online magazine Complex held the "50 Hottest Jewish Women in the World" parade a year earlier, it ranked her in second place, ahead of Bar Refaeli , Natalie Portman and Gwyneth Paltrow. Their winner, by the way, was Estee Ginsburg.
And don't think that she only stars in parades that are based on appearance - last year Time magazine chose her as one of the most influential women in the world thanks to the charity she and Kutcher founded for the people of Ukraine, with which they raised tens of millions of dollars.
Went on a patriotic date
Before Kutcher came on the scene romantically, Kunis was the partner of actor Macaulay Culkin for eight years. Naturally, there were plenty of engagement and impending wedding rumors, but they ended up breaking up in 2010 without taking their relationship to the next level. And it's probably good that they did, because shortly after their breakup one of the cutest and most lovable power couples in Hollywood was born.
But just before that happened, Kunis went on a patriotic date: In 2011, an American soldier who served in Afghanistan invited her to be his partner at a ball held at the Marine Corps base in North Carolina to mark the 236th anniversary of the establishment of the corps.
The soldier, Scott Moore, suggested that she accompany him in a YouTube video that predictably went viral. "Take a moment to think about it and get back to me. Bye for now," he told her in the video. Of course, she could not refuse such a request, responded to the offer and went with him to the event.
Jackie and Kelso forever
Kunis and Kutcher met on the set of "That 70s Show" when she was 14 and he was 20. On one hand, you can say – 'don't worry, 15 years will pass until the romance blossoms between them' and then the age difference will be more legitimate. On the other hand, in the series they played a couple, so the young Kunis found herself in some rather intimate situations with the mature Kutcher - for example, her first kiss.
"I was very stressed and I felt uneasy. He was so cute and I was really into him," Kunis told People magazine. Kucher, for his part, had no idea that he was her first: "I had no idea and it's a good thing that it was, otherwise I would have felt a lot of responsibility and I would have been stressed anyway. She was actually calm and it seemed like she had already done it thousands of times. I was the one with butterflies in my stomach."
Kutcher was then newly divorced from Demi Moore after eight years of marriage, and Kunis had left a long relationship with Macaulay Culkin. They met again at the Golden Globes ceremony
Yes, there is something romantic about Kunis' first kiss being with her husband-to-be. Still, the reality of their relationship is that it formed long after the series ended - in 2012. Jo Rupp, who starred alongside them in the series, said that at a reunion meeting held with the cast, she had the feeling that something was going to happen between them: "I looked at them from the side and I saw a spark between them. Really It was clear to me," she said.
Kutcher was then newly divorced from Demi Moore after eight years of marriage, and Kunis, as mentioned, had left a long relationship with Macaulay Culkin. They met again at the Golden Globes ceremony and Kunis said: "I noticed a beautiful man standing with his back to me. I thought to myself that he looked handsome and when he turned to me I realized that it was Kutcher. I thought to myself how strange it was that I looked at him and it turned out to be someone I had known for years."
The reunion gave rise to a first and second date, and yet they were in no hurry to make the relationship official. "We wanted to be lighthearted, have fun together. We were both single, we trusted each other, everything was great," she said.
5 View gallery
Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher got serious about each other fairly quickly after they were reunited
(Photo: Getty Images)
The frivolity quickly turned into something serious, when Kunis realized she was developing feelings for Kutcher. "It was like a punch in the gut, literally overnight. I told him, 'I really care about you. I don't want to ruin it so I'm going to walk away before it becomes too much more'. The day after that he came to me and said, 'Move in with me'. I agreed," she said.
They got engaged about two years later, but only after Kutcher received her father's blessing. "It was important for Ashton to honor her parents and keep the tradition. He takes it seriously and wanted to do it right," said one of his associates.
One major scandal
They wasted no time in starting a family - eight months later, in October 2014, their eldest daughter, Wyatt Isabella, was born. The wedding took place about a year later, in July 2015, and in 2016 their son, Dimitri Fortwood, was born.
Since then, in contrast to the shaky relationship of their characters in the series, the relationship between Kunis and Kutcher actually seems extremely stable, even though they have also faced here and there rumors of a breakup that they were quick to deny with humor. Kutcher posted a caption on Instagram that heralded the apparent marital crisis, and asked Kunis: "Honey, what's this? What's going on?" She replied: "It's over between us", and he replied: "Oh no, what are we going to do now?"
In recent years, they have returned to collaborating on air. In 2021, they made a commercial for Cheetos together that aired during the Super Bowl, and Kunis joked: "We did it to get a little break from the kids." And last year they returned to their roots and were guests on "The 90s Show", a continuation of the series where they met.
Despite their clean-cut image, they didn't escape one major scandal - which is amusingly related to cleanliness (and admittedly quite stupid). About two years ago, they won particularly unflattering headlines after admitting on Dax Shepherd's podcast that they only shower their children when there really is no choice.
"When I was a little girl, we didn't have hot water, so I didn't shower much. And now with my kids, I don't bathe them every day. I wasn't one of those parents who shower their babies," Kunis said, and Kutcher added: "That's how it works – if you see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there's no point."
There is no doubt that Kutcher knows what he has. Although he does not often share personal photos, two months ago he posted a photo of Kunis and wrote: "I am the luckiest man in the world"
After their words received a lot of criticism from surfers and the media, the couple responded in their favorite way - with humor. They posted a video where they shower their children and Kutcher scolds Kunis: "You put water on the kids? Are you trying to melt them? It's ridiculous!"
But it didn't end there, their confession led to a wide discussion in Hollywood from other stars who also shared their bathing habits and those of their children.
They are also not afraid to laugh at each other. When Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon were photographed together at the premiere of their joint film, "Your Place or Mine," the pictures came out quite strange and it seems that both of them did not really feel comfortable with each other. Kutcher later explained in an interview: "If I had laid a hand on her or approached her, everyone would have said we were having an affair." Kunis, on the other hand, took it much less seriously and said that she wrote to both him and Witherspoon: "You look so strange together."
There is no doubt that Kutcher knows what he has. Although he does not often share personal photos, two months ago he posted a photo of Kunis and wrote: "I am the luckiest man in the world."
Kunis, for her part, admitted that she thinks about the many years when they were just friends. "I look back and think to myself that we could have spent another 20 years together, it's a shame that we lost them. On the other hand, we wouldn't have become a couple if we hadn't gone through what we experienced separately to become who we are today.