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"I am very much a creature of habit, and I have no life consistency. None." Mila Kunis is one of the most dynamic performers in all of Hollywood. She broke into the industry after faking her birthday in order to land a role on That '70s Show as the pretentious but lovable Jackie Burkhart. From there, Kunis was able to carve her comedic chops in order to land the role of Meg Griffin on the historic animated TV series, Family Guy.

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Far from just a comedic actress, Kunis has carved out a career that has spanned numerous darker projects. Kunis is probably most well-known for her Golden Globe-nominated performance in the film Black Swan, opposite Natalie Portman. Since she first broke into the industry, Mila Kunis has managed to turn into one of the most well-known faces in Hollywood. Today, we are going to head back to her roots in order to see how she made that journey.

Born in the Soviet Union

Milena Markovna Kunis was born on August 14, 1983, in Chernivtsi, Ukrainian SSR, in the Soviet Union. Her parents are Elvira and Mark Kunis. Mark worked as a mechanical engineer and cab driver during Kunis's childhood while Elvira worked as a physics teacher and pharmacy owner. Mila has an older brother named Michael, whom she grew up with. 

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Born in the Soviet Union, Kunis was raised to speak Russian. She has since, obviously, become bilingual thanks to her early adoption of the English language. Kunis refers to her early life as 'awesome', stating that her parents had 'amazing jobs' and that she was 'very lucky' to be born where she was. The Kunis family decided to leave the USSR in order to give a future to Mila and Michael. Thanks to her Jewish roots, Mila and her family had to endure high levels of antisemitism while they still lived in the Soviet Union. This was cited as one of the other reasons that the family chose to relocate.

After leaving the Soviet Union behind, the Kunis family chose to settle down in Los Angeles, California. According to Mila, her family landed in L.A. with only $250 to their name. Additionally, Mila's parents could not transfer their degrees or jobs from the Soviet Union to America, so they were essentially starting over from scratch.

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In Los Angeles, Mila enrolled at the Rosewood Elementary School before she spoke a word of English. Mila has spoken repeatedly about how much trouble she had adjusting to America, claiming that she cried 'every day' because she didn't understand the language, people, or culture of America. Mila says her adjustment was like, "Being blind and deaf at age seven. And that's kind of what it felt like moving to the States."

Kunis would go on to attend Hubert Howe Bancroft Middle School before going on to Fairfax High School. It was around this time that she began to take acting classes at Beverly Hills Studio after being urged to attend by her father. While she was away from school for acting work, she would work with an on-set tutor. Before developing her life to acting, Kunis would also attend UCLA and Loyola Marymount University.

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Breaking Through to Hollywood

While Kunis began studying acting at the age of nine, she would take a few years until she made her actual break. In those few years, Kunis would land roles on Days of Our Lives (1994), Piranha (1995), Baywatch (1995) and Nick Freno (1996). It wasn't until Kunis was called in to audition for That '70s Show (1998) that her life began to change.

When Kunis was called in to audition for That '70s Show, she had to overcome one stunning disadvantage. According to the producers, they were only accepting auditions from performers that were 18-years-old and up. At the time, Kunis was just 14. Still, she believed in herself so much that she chose to tell the casting directors that she would be eighteen, failing to specify that it wouldn't be for another four years. Even though her lie was eventually unraveled, the producers fell in love with her and chose to cast Kunis as Jackie Burkhart. Kunis would become one of the biggest stars in the ensemble cast, winning a pair of Young Star Awards during her eight-year run on the show.

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While That '70s Show may have been Kunis's first big role, her second life-changing role would come only a few months later. In 1999, Mila Kunis was brought in to read for the role of Meg Griffin on the animated show, Family Guy (1999). Kunis had initially won the role before opting to pursue That '70s Show instead. Lacey Chabert would originally be cast as Meg, but she fell out with the producers and Kunis was brought back into the fold. MacFarlane said of Kunis, "She had a very natural quality to Meg that really made what we did with that character kind of work."

After finding success on television, it only made sense that Kunis would try to branch out into the film world. Unfortunately, Kunis wouldn't get her big break on the silver screen until 2008's, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. In the film, Kunis starred alongside Jason Segal, Kristen Bell, and Russel Brand in a sprawling romantic comedy about a recently dumped musician who heads to Hawaii to clear his head, only to run into his ex and her new rockstar boyfriend.  The film was a critical and commercial hit while also serving to push Kunis to the next level of star status.

After the success of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Kunis would land several notable roles including Extract (2009), Max Payne (2008), and Black Swan (2010). The last film, Black Swan, would land Kunis serious critical acclaim as she dropped twenty pounds and trained ballerina for two months in order to play her part. She would be nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe for her work. Since then, Kunis has appeared in a number of major films all while juggling her growing family off-screen. Some of her most notable projects include Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), Jupiter Ascending (2015), and Bad Moms (2016) and Bad Moms 2 (2017).

Outside of her work in front of the camera, Kunis has become a marketing force. Kunis has become the face of Jim Beam bourbon thanks to a global marketing partnership with Beam, Inc. She has been named one of the Sexiest Women Alive by Esquire, AskMen, and Maxim. 

In her personal life, Mila Kunis is married to her former That '70s Show castmate, Ashton Kutcher. Mila and Ashton began dating in 2012 and by 2015 they were married. Ashton and Mila have two children together, a son named Dimitry and a daughter named Wyatt.