Inside Mila Kunis’ Ukrainian heritage: she moved to Los Angeles at age 7, broke into Hollywood, and now she and husband Ashton Kutcher are raising US$30 million for Ukrainian refugees
- Kunis’ family fled from Ukraine in 1991 to Los Angeles, where she found fame as an actress in her breakout role in That 70s Show, as well as in Black Swan and Family Guy
- She’s dined with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska, and now she’s raising donations via GoFundMe, partnering with Flexport and Airbnb
Countless celebrities have used their platforms to raise awareness of the crisis in Ukraine and the difficulties facing Ukrainian refugees, but actress Mila Kunis and her husband Ashton Kutcher’s plea is more personal than most.
Here’s what we know about Kunis’ heritage and how she’s a proud Ukrainian today …
Kunis’ family moved to Los Angeles in 1991
Kunis’ father, an engineer, and mother, a physics teacher, left their careers behind when they moved to the United States. Her father began taking odd jobs from delivering pizzas to painting houses, and her mother took up work in a pharmacy.
“My parents wanted my brother and me to have a future, and so they just dropped everything. They came with US$250,” Kunis told the Los Angeles Times in a 2008 interview.
The adjustment was difficult for young Kunis. “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. But I got over it pretty fast,” she told the Los Angeles Times.
She made her acting debut three years later
According to IMDB, Kunis started acting when she was only nine years old, when her father enrolled her in an acting class he heard about on the radio.
By the age of 11, Kunis made her first foray into the acting world, appearing in the daytime television soap Days of Our Lives. Four years later, she joined the cast of That 70s Show as Jackie Burkhart, acting alongside Topher Grace, Laura Prepon and future husband Ashton Kutcher. In 1999, Kunis began voicing Meg Griffin in Seth MacFarlane’s animated sitcom, Family Guy.
That 70s Show wrapped in 2006, but Kutcher and Kunis reconnected in 2012 and began dating. The pair became engaged two years later, marrying in 2015 and now have two children, daughter Wyatt and son Dimitri.
Kunis transitioned to film with breakout roles including Judd Apatow’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Black Swan, for which she received Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actress.