She's got a happy marriage and a steady career,
but life for Mila Kunis has been marked by a dark childhood and some serious health scares.
Mila Kunis was born to Jewish parents on August 14, 1983 in Ukraine,
which was at the time part of the Soviet Union. When she was seven years old,
she and her family moved to Los Angeles, driven by the pursuit of the American dream and an
aspiration for a brighter future. But their decision to relocate also had a darker side,
as their religion was being suppressed by the Soviet government. As Kunis explained in 2012,
"After the Holocaust, in Russia you were not allowed to be religious.
So my parents raised me to know I was Jewish. You know who you are inside."
Kunis encountered anti-Semitic graffiti around her school, which hit close to home,
as her grandparents and many other family members were victims of the Holocaust. Now that she's a
mother herself, she makes it a point to raise her children religiously. During the weekly
celebration of Shabbat, for example, she allows her kids to have a traditional sip of wine.
"On Friday mornings, wakes up and I'm like, 'It's Friday.' She goes, 'I can have wine?!'"
As is the case with many immigrant children, Kunis' adjustment to her new home wasn't exactly
easy. She began her first day of second grade without knowing a word of English,
which obviously wasn't ideal. It was so difficult that Kunis has
pretty much blocked out the memory. As she admitted to the Los Angeles Times in 2008,
"I have no recollection of 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."
Fortunately for Kunis, she was able to find her footing after her first year. Her mother got a
job in a pharmacy, while her father worked as a cab driver, and they sent her to acting classes
to help her with her English. That proved to be a wise decision. Her fluency improved,
and she quickly found a talent manager. It wasn't long before she began popping up in
commercials and soon enough, That '70s Show, which she joined at the age of 14.
It may be hard to believe that someone like Mila Kunis could have ever been bullied for the
way she looks, but it's true. But of course, it can be quite ruthless on the schoolyard,
no matter who you are. As Kunis revealed to OK! Magazine in 2011,
"I grew into my face. I had a very funny looking face when I was little. I had like big eyes,
big lips, big ears. But when I was little I was constantly being made
fun of for having big eyes and that was awful. I used to come home crying:
'Why do I have big eyes?' And my parents were like: 'You're crazy!'"
Those days are now a distant memory for Kunis, with various publications over the
years crowning her as the sexiest woman in the world. But those accolades aren't really
something that she concerns herself with. As she told the Los Angeles Times in 2008,
"You've got to base your career on something other than being FHM's top
100 number 1 girl. Your looks are going to die out, and then what's going to be left?"
Kunis has still had to deal with bullying as an adult,
but now it comes from the tabloids. In 2019, for example, the National Enquirer criticized her for
her apparent weight loss and quoted anonymous insiders who were supposedly worried about her
health. Unsurprisingly, she declined to say anything when she was reached for comment.
The love story of Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher began back in the 1990s when
they met on the set of That '70s Show and played on-again-off-again couple Jackie
Burkhart and Michael Kelso. Off screen, they kept things platonic for a while,
until they reunited in 2012 after both going through separations with other long-term partners.
Weirdly enough, their real-life relationship mirrored the very similar rom-com movies they
had starred in the year before: Kunis in Friends with Benefits,
and Kutcher in No Strings Attached. Soon enough, things grew quite serious. By 2015,
they were married and had already welcomed their first child.
"Like literally, we clearly didn't watch the end of either one of our movies."
However, while Kunis and Kutcher appear to be quite happy now, there is a questionable side
to the origin of their relationship. Part of that has to do with a 2002 clip from
The Rosie O'Donnell Show that went viral a couple of decades after the episode aired.
The two actors recounted the story of their characters' first kiss on That '70s Show,
which also happened to be Kunis' first kiss ever, on screen or otherwise. As Kutcher recalled,
"They were like, 'Okay, you guys are going to be making out in this scene.' And I'm thinking,
wait, this is slightly illegal, right?"
Kunis added,
"I've never kissed a guy. Ashton's attractive,
and I was a 14-year-old little girl, and I was extremely scared for my life."
Making the whole situation worse was that their co-star Danny Masterson proposed a
bet to give Kutcher ten dollars if he could turn the peck into a French kiss.
In 2010, Mila Kunis received plenty of critical acclaim for her performance in
the psychological thriller Black Swan, in which she starred opposite Natalie Portman.
The film was set in the world of ballet, so Kunis put in the work to properly get
into ballerina shape. She trained for four months straight, dancing seven days a week
under the guidance of American Ballet Theatre coach Georgina Parkinson. According to Kunis,
the training was grueling, both physically and psychologically. As she revealed to W Magazine,
"I tore a ligament. I dislocated my shoulder. I have two scars on my back."
In addition to the intense training, Kunis also maintained a strict 1,200-calorie diet.
That's the minimum recommended calorie intake for a woman, according to health experts. She
ended up losing 20 pounds while preparing to shoot. The rigorous regimen paid off,
but Kunis vowed that she would never dance again. As she put it,
"I'm a strong believer in mind over matter, but I didn't fully understand what that meant
until this production. I was like, well — I wear heels; I can do this. I was wrong:
Christian Louboutins are uncomfortable, but I screamed the first time I put on a pointe shoe."
"It was one of the hardest things I've ever done."
Before she got together with Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis was in a long-term relationship
with Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin. They were together for more than eight years
before they split in 2011. Despite their shared star power, they managed to keep
their relationship as private as possible. As Kunis explained to Parade back in 2007,
"I think we relish the privacy we do actually
have and are able to sustain it. We enjoy each other's company."
Ultimately, though, it wasn't meant to be, as the two quietly separated around
the time Kunis was promoting Black Swan. When they announced the breakup publicly,
they continued to respect each other's privacy, while vowing to keep things amicable.
But later comments indicate that the split perhaps wasn't as amicable as it seemed to
be at the time. During a 2018 appearance on the podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard,
Kunis got into some of the rougher details, while admitting that she
regrets the way that she acted when she was in her twenties. As she put it,
"It's f---ed up what I did, and it's f---ed up how I did it. When I got to be single I said,
'I just need to figure myself out.' I genuinely need to know why I did what I did,
and, like, regroup myself as a human being."
Certain disabilities aren't always apparent from someone's outward appearance. So it came
as a bit of a surprise when Mila Kunis opened up about her struggles with chronic iritis,
an eye inflammation that can cause pain, light sensitivity, headaches, and, in severe cases,
partial or total vision loss. Kunis' iritis resulted in blindness in one eye, the development
of a cataract, and heterochromia, a condition in which the irises are different colors.
Kunis chose to keep this condition private for years due to personal reasons,
but she eventually disclosed that she had undergone surgery to correct the
issue. As she revealed to Cosmopolitan in 2011,
"I was blind in one eye for many years, and nobody knew. I'm not blind anymore. I had
surgery a couple of months ago. They cut it open and dropped a new lens in there."
Between 2010 and 2011, a series of hackings and wiretappings wreaked havoc on the lives
of more than 50 individuals in the entertainment industry. The victims included Scarlett Johansson,
Christina Aguilera, and Mila Kunis. The three of them publicly acknowledged that
they'd been targeted in the hopes of raising awareness about the crime's seriousness.
The perpetrator was ultimately identified as Florida resident Christopher Chaney,
who was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The judge in his case said,
"It's hard to fathom the mindset of a person who would accomplish
all of this. These types of crimes are as pernicious and serious as physical stalking."
Chaney was ordered to pay more than $200,000 in compensation. He apologized in court by saying,
"I don't know what else to say other than I'm sorry.
I could be sentenced to never use a computer again and I wouldn't care."
"I mean, I wasn't saving archives of emails to maybe blackmail someone."
Kunis' eye condition wasn't the only health trouble that affected her and her family. In
2020 her husband Ashton Kutcher discovered that he had the rare autoimmune condition vasculitis,
which triggers inflammation within the blood vessels. In a 2022 episode of the
TV show Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge, Kutcher opened up about
his battle with vasculitis, the cause of which remains unknown. As he admitted,
"Two years ago, I had this weird, super rare form of vasculitis that
knocked out my vision. It knocked out my hearing. It knocked out all
my equilibrium. You don't really appreciate it until it's gone."
Kutcher has managed to recover thanks to proper medical treatment and his
wife's unwavering support. During an interview with Entertainment Tonight,
Kunis revealed what her mindset was during the height of it all by explaining,
"I don't think you have time to sit down and talk, you kinda just power
through. You go and deal with whatever health issue comes your way, but you still got kids,
you still got a family, you gotta live life. And I think that we are so fortunate to have
one another, but as far as sitting there and incessantly talking about things, no."
"You gotta, you gotta act. You gotta do. You gotta do."
This latest chapter in Kunis' life was more of an error in judgment than a tragedy for her,
though it certainly revolved around tragic circumstances. For years,
she and Ashton Kutcher enjoyed a reputation for their advocacy of humanitarian causes.
But that all came crashing down when they wrote character letters in support of their
That '70s Show co-star Danny Masterson, who ended up being convicted of raping two women.
Kunis and Kutcher described Masterson as a positive influence on them and an older
brother figure. When the letters were made public, they prompted widespread criticism,
which led the couple to step down from their roles at Thorn,
a charitable organization that Kutcher had co-founded to combat child sexual exploitation.
In response to the backlash, they released a video on Instagram to clarify their stance.
"We support victims. We have done this historically through our work
and will continue to do so in the future."
Alas, this attempt at an apology only inspired
more backlash. As Variety TV critic Daniel D'Addario wrote,
"If the aim was to present us with a frank dose
of Ashton and Mila letting us into their world, it missed the mark."