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Milena Kunis (born August 14, 1983) is an American actress. She is best known for her television roles, playing Jackie Burkhart on That '70s Show and providing the voice of Meg Griffin on the animated series Family Guy.

Biography

Early life

Kunis was born in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), to a Jewish family. She is the daughter of Elvira, a physics teacher, and Mark Kunis, a mechanical engineer.^[1] She also has an older brother. Her family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1991 to separate from her father.^[2][1] She says that her English improved from watching The Price Is Right. ^[3] In Los Angeles, she attended Hubert Howe Bancroft Middle School. She was mostly taught by an on-set tutor for her high school years while taping That 70s Show. When not on the set, she attended Fairfax Senior High School.

Career

At age nine Kunis took acting classes after-school at the Beverly Hills Studios, where she met her first and current manager Susan Curtis. She began appearing in print-ads, catalog and TV commercials for children's products like Lisa Frank products, Mattel's Barbie Doll and Payless Shoes. She also modeled for a Guess?, Girls Clothing Campaign. Her first TV role was as the young Hope Williams on an episode of the popular soap opera Days of Our Lives.

Previous to Kunis's breakthrough role on That 70s Show, Kunis had appeared in such films as Santa with Muscles, the 1997 film Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves as a minor character (the daughter's friend) and in the Angelina Jolie film Gia, as Gia's younger self. She also had a minor role on 7th Heaven as Lucy's nemesis.

Kunis became well known after being cast in the television series That '70s Show in 1998. During the auditions, all people auditioning for the roles in the show were required to be at least 17 years of age, so Kunis told the casting staff at the audition that she was going to be 17 "on her birthday" not specifying to which birthday she was referring. After receiving the part, she was kept on the role despite having misled the directors as she had been considered the best fit for the character and was thought to have been creative in her way of gaining the audition despite her age. She was 14 at the time of the audition and had turned 15 by the time the show began filming; when the executive producer said, "you said you were going to be 17", she responded with "I will be 17...".^[4] Kunis has stated many times that she is nothing like Jackie, her character on the show. Instead, she says that she is more of the cute girl-next-door type with a dash of tomboy. She has been nominated for a Teen Choice Award for playing Jackie seven times but failed to win.

Kunis is the voice of Meg Griffin in the animated TV show Family Guy for which she has received a 2007 Annie Award-nomination, and of several characters on the Adult Swim show Robot Chicken. She has acted as the voice of Tanya in the video game Saints Row, she also voiced Meg Griffin for a Family Guy video game released in 2006.

Kunis has appeared in music videos like Aerosmith's music video "Jaded", Vitamin C's music video "The Itch", The Strokes music video "The End Has No End" and Mam Taylor feat. Joel Madden's music video "LA Girls", which also starred Carmen Electra.

Kunis has modelled for such mens magazines as Stuff and Maxim.

Kunis has had several large film roles which she obtained during or after That 70s Show such as the teen film Get Over It with Kirsten Dunst, American Psycho II: All American Girl with William Shatner, After Sex, Boot Camp and Moving McAllister with Jon Heder.

Kunis's most recent role was as Rachel Jansen in the 2008 movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall which also starred Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Russell Brand, Jonah Hill and Bill Hader. Her performance received rave reviews and a "Teen Choice Award" nomination for her breakout performance.

She will star alongside Mark Wahlberg and Ludacris in the upcoming 2008 movie Max Payne. Max Payne is based on the popular video game of the same name. She will be portraying character Mona Sax.

Personal life

Kunis was ranked #54 in Stuff's "102 Sexiest Women in the World" (2002); Maxim named her #47 on its 2006 Hot 100 list.^[5] In 2008, Mila was ranked #81 on the Maxim Hot 100 list. She was also ranked #81 on the FHM U.S 100 Sexiest Women in the World 2008, however unranked in other FHM magazines from different nations.

She has been involved with Macaulay Culkin since 2002. According to the DVD commentary of the Family Guy movie (during the third part in which Kunis was a commentator), Kunis claims that one of the reasons her boyfriend likes her is because of her role on Family Guy; he is a big fan of the show. She goes on to say that it was because of Culkin that she actually sat down and watched the show (having never done so before, the voice of Meg Griffin had been done by Lacey Chabert at that time). The couple landed in news headlines in 2006 after their vacation in Israel was interrupted by the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon War, and they ended up quickly returning to the U.S.^{citation needed}

She is heterochromatic, which means her two eyes are different in color. One is blue while the other is hazel (green with a tint of brown).

Kunis, who is a practicing Jew, has spoken several times publicly about her religion and prejudice against Jewish people in her native Ukraine and other European countries such as Russia.^{citation needed}

Kunis is afraid of insects which caused her to run off stage at a 2004 taping of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, when the "bug man" appeared after her interview.^{citation needed}

Her favorite movie is Dirty Dancing and her favorite TV show is 8 Simple Rules.^{citation needed}

Filmography

Films and video games