Mila Kunis for Interview, this woman is a force to be reckoned with!
Mila Kunis
Mila Kunis is refreshingly unpretentious when it comes to talking about her craft, which is perhaps befitting of an actress who, until relatively recently, was best known for her eight-year run as louche hottie Jackie Burkhart on the self-consciously middle-brow sitcom That '70s Show. But since the series ended in 2006, Kunis has turned most of her attention to making movies—and has, in turn, been a part of some films that have garnered attention. Her theatrical breakthrough was her very grown-up, Golden Globe-nominated performance in Darren Aronofsky's gothic-horror film Black Swan (2010), as a manipulative aspiring prima ballerina who gleefully exacerbates the psychological descent of her unhinged rival, played by Natalie Portman (whose own work in Black Swan earned her both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Actress). But the list of other films that she has been involved in over the past several years is long and eclectic, ranging from comedies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) with Jason Segel, Date Night (2010) with Tina Fey and Steve Carell, and Friends With Benefits with Justin Timberlake, to action-adventure movies such as Max Payne (2008) with Mark Wahlberg (based on the video game), and The Book of Eli (2010) with Denzel Washington. For the past 12 years, Kunis has also voiced the character of Meg Griffin on Seth MacFarlane's critically acclaimed animated series Family Guy, and recently teamed once again with both MacFarlane and Wahlberg for Ted, which co-stars a CGI teddy bear and was released earlier this summer.
Thomas Leroy, the sadistic ballet director played by Vincent Cassel in Black Swan, could have been describing Kunis herself when he says of her character in the film, Lily, "Watch the way she moves - imprecise, but . . . Effortless. She's not faking it." On screen, Kunis is difficult to miss, with her luminous doe eyes and dark, hesitant beauty. But it's the accessibility and naturalism that she brings to her performances—whether she's working on a raunchy romantic comedy, a hyperreal action flick, a dark melodrama, or alongside a lascivious talking teddy bear—that is a big part of her appeal. Kunis's choices since That '70s Show ended haven't been monumental—they've been solid and unostentatious, the work of an actress well aware of the fact that she herself is a work-in-progress. But they've also been bold, a mixed bag of films and roles that, if anything, have been marked by her refusal to be reduced to a type as she finds out who she is and what she wants to become.
Born in Chernivtsi, in a part of the former Soviet Union that is now Ukraine, Kunis relocated to Los Angeles with her family when she was 7 years old, and soon after, her parents enrolled her in drama classes to help her overcome her shyness. By the age of 9, she was working professionally. But her big break came when, at 14, she was cast alongside Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace, Laura Prepon, Wilmer Valderrama, and Danny Masterson in That '70s Show. Kunis was the youngest of the pack, but with her razor-sharp comedic timing, instantly stood out as one of the brightest. She also became tabloid fodder when she began an eight-year relationship with once embattled, now reclusive former child actor Macaulay Culkin. (In early 2011, the couple announced that they had split.)
Within the last year, Kunis has completed two more films: Tar, which is based on the writings of the poet C.K. Williams, and Blood Ties, a crime-thriller with Marion Cotillard, Clive Owen, and Zoe Saldana, and directed by Guillaume Canet. She will next be seen in Oz: The Great and Powerful, Sam Raimi's forthcoming prequel to The Wizard of Oz, which co-stars Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Zach Braff, and her interviewer here, James Franco (with whom she also appears in Tar). Franco, who was in New Orleans shooting the celebrities-at-the-apocalypse comedy The End of the World with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, recently caught up with the 29-year-old Kunis at home in L.A.
JAMES FRANCO: So a funny thing happened on this movie I'm doing down here in New Orleans that made me think of you. The movie is a comedy, but it's kind of an outrageous one, and this actress—I won't say who, but she had a smaller role in the film—walked off the movie in the middle of a scene.
MILA KUNIS: This is Seth [Rogen]'s movie that you're talking about?
FRANCO: Yeah. I'll admit that the scene we were doing was pretty crazy. There's not any nudity, but it is pretty outrageous. It's not as if the scene wasn't in the script, though. In any case, I didn't see any of this go down, but I guess she basically went up to the directors, Seth and Evan [Goldberg], and said, "I don't think I can do this." She, by the way, didn't have to do anything crazy in the scene. But what was going on around her was, I guess, too extreme for her. So Seth was like, "Well, what can we do to fix it?" And she said, "There's nothing you can do to fix it. It's just everything." And he said, "Well, let's just shoot it and I promise you can come to the editing room, and, if you don't like what we've cut together, then we will not put it in the movie." And she said, "No, that's still not good. I just can't do this. I can't be here." And he said, "Do you want to leave?" And she said, "Yeah, I've got to leave."
Thomas Leroy, the sadistic ballet director played by Vincent Cassel in Black Swan, could have been describing Kunis herself when he says of her character in the film, Lily, "Watch the way she moves - imprecise, but . . . Effortless. She's not faking it." On screen, Kunis is difficult to miss, with her luminous doe eyes and dark, hesitant beauty. But it's the accessibility and naturalism that she brings to her performances—whether she's working on a raunchy romantic comedy, a hyperreal action flick, a dark melodrama, or alongside a lascivious talking teddy bear—that is a big part of her appeal. Kunis's choices since That '70s Show ended haven't been monumental—they've been solid and unostentatious, the work of an actress well aware of the fact that she herself is a work-in-progress. But they've also been bold, a mixed bag of films and roles that, if anything, have been marked by her refusal to be reduced to a type as she finds out who she is and what she wants to become.
Born in Chernivtsi, in a part of the former Soviet Union that is now Ukraine, Kunis relocated to Los Angeles with her family when she was 7 years old, and soon after, her parents enrolled her in drama classes to help her overcome her shyness. By the age of 9, she was working professionally. But her big break came when, at 14, she was cast alongside Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace, Laura Prepon, Wilmer Valderrama, and Danny Masterson in That '70s Show. Kunis was the youngest of the pack, but with her razor-sharp comedic timing, instantly stood out as one of the brightest. She also became tabloid fodder when she began an eight-year relationship with once embattled, now reclusive former child actor Macaulay Culkin. (In early 2011, the couple announced that they had split.)
Within the last year, Kunis has completed two more films: Tar, which is based on the writings of the poet C.K. Williams, and Blood Ties, a crime-thriller with Marion Cotillard, Clive Owen, and Zoe Saldana, and directed by Guillaume Canet. She will next be seen in Oz: The Great and Powerful, Sam Raimi's forthcoming prequel to The Wizard of Oz, which co-stars Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Zach Braff, and her interviewer here, James Franco (with whom she also appears in Tar). Franco, who was in New Orleans shooting the celebrities-at-the-apocalypse comedy The End of the World with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, recently caught up with the 29-year-old Kunis at home in L.A.
JAMES FRANCO: So a funny thing happened on this movie I'm doing down here in New Orleans that made me think of you. The movie is a comedy, but it's kind of an outrageous one, and this actress—I won't say who, but she had a smaller role in the film—walked off the movie in the middle of a scene.
MILA KUNIS: This is Seth [Rogen]'s movie that you're talking about?
FRANCO: Yeah. I'll admit that the scene we were doing was pretty crazy. There's not any nudity, but it is pretty outrageous. It's not as if the scene wasn't in the script, though. In any case, I didn't see any of this go down, but I guess she basically went up to the directors, Seth and Evan [Goldberg], and said, "I don't think I can do this." She, by the way, didn't have to do anything crazy in the scene. But what was going on around her was, I guess, too extreme for her. So Seth was like, "Well, what can we do to fix it?" And she said, "There's nothing you can do to fix it. It's just everything." And he said, "Well, let's just shoot it and I promise you can come to the editing room, and, if you don't like what we've cut together, then we will not put it in the movie." And she said, "No, that's still not good. I just can't do this. I can't be here." And he said, "Do you want to leave?" And she said, "Yeah, I've got to leave."
Interview taken from Interview
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