Mila Kunis: On The Brink of Movie Stardom

View Gallery Yes, she knows exactly what you think of her. But check your skepticism at the door, folks, because with three new movies in the can—apocalyptic thriller The Book of Eli, ensemble comedy Date Night, and later, ballet drama Black Swan—Mila Kunis is here to prove she’s got what it takes to be a star. We explore why the underestimated actress is finally getting the respect she deserves—and how she intends to keep it. Photography by David Roemer. Styling by Anda & Masha.

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I first met Mila Kunis nearly 10 years ago on the set of the generic teen comedy Get Over It. We were fake high school classmates in a fake high school. She and co-star Kirsten Dunst were inseparable and I was an invisible extra. There were husky crew members on hand to remind us of the prevailing social order: extras were not to fraternize with movie stars. It was just like high school, actually. When Dunst once caught me gawking, she pantomimed one of those rickety movie cameras you crank during a game of charades and, in a voice reserved for children, said mockingly, “We’re making a movie!” Kunis, still just the cute one from That ’70s Show, stood next to her more established co-star and giggled.

It’s 10 years later, and I’m with Kunis again. The 26-year-old actress sits curled up in a 1950s-style diner booth at Manhattan’s BBar and Grill, looking like she’s aged approximately three days since our last encounter. Sporting a post-workout outfit—billowing gray hoodie, cut-off black tights and trainers, her chestnut brown hair pinned back tightly against her head—she sends a quick text and coils her white headphones around her iPhone. She complains about a torn muscle in her left arm, orders a glass of Shiraz and readies herself for the talk at hand.

With the words “Get Over It” barely out of my mouth, she covers hers and lets out a lengthy squeal: “I haven’t seen that movie in years!” And indeed, that Mila Kunis, an embryonic TV star whose career was still in question, was an entirely different person than the one sitting in front of me, the one set to co-star in Denzel Washington’s next film, The Book of Eli.

At 15, Kunis became a pin-up for keg-swilling frat boys as Jackie Burkhart, the spoiled gossip on Fox’s That ’70s Show, a role she inhabited for eight years. (She was hired when she was 14, a fact she hid from casting directors who were reluctant to employ a minor.) Jackie was pretty, looked good in bell-bottoms and used her high-pitched voice to wheedle, gripe, whine and manipulate. You’d be forgiven for assuming, based on her performance, that she was destined to remain Ashton Kutcher’s arm candy forever.

Kunis didn’t do much to burnish her credibility, posing half-nude, at all of 16, on the cover of Stuff magazine under the barely legal headline, “Mila Kunis Dares You to Look.” (These days, she claims she would never be photographed in a bikini unless “someone air-brushed the shit out of it.”) On hiatus from the show, Kunis appeared in iffy movies like American Psycho 2, a bargain-bin sequel to the Christian Bale cult classic. “I didn’t think this was going to be my career at 16,” Kunis says without apology, twirling the drawstrings on her hoodie between her slender fingers. “Any movie I did prior to the age of 20, I did because I could.”

Then came Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the movie that upended everything we thought we knew about Kunis’ talent. Yet another offering from the Judd Apatow Institute of Comedic Learning, this one about a heartbroken sap’s romantic recovery, Sarah Marshall co-starred a laundry list of likeable comedians, including Jason Segel, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Jack McBrayer and Russell Brand. And yet, in scene after scene, it’s Kunis, as the hotel clerk Rachel, who steals the show. Grounded, funny, appealing and gorgeous, she was a revelation. Who knew she had it in her? When the final credits rolled, audiences found themselves entertaining a thought they would have laughed away two hours earlier: Mila Kunis is going to be a movie star.