NYLON - April 2008 - (Page 141)

GEEK LOVE Mila Kunis has no interest in the Hollywood scene, thank you very much. She’s got a stable relationship, a quiet home life, and some World of Warcraft to get back to. By Eric Alt. Photographed by Matthew Frost The story goes like this: The producers of That ’70s Show were just about to roll on the ﬁrst episode when they discovered a shocking secret: That the petite brunette with the exotic two-tone eyes they just hired was— gasp!—only 14 years old. She had somehow beguiled everyone, and now her double life was about to be exposed in front of a live studio audience. It’s a good story, just not a true one. “I didn’t lie,” laughs the now 25-year-old Mila Kunis, curled up on a couch in a treehouse-like abode in Los Feliz. “I just ﬁbbed. I said I was going to be 18 one day, I just didn’t say when. But they knew, because I had to sign a contract and it speciﬁed that I needed a studio teacher. People like to interpret the story to make it funnier, like I showed up one day and they were like, ‘Whaaa?’ But they knew before I got the job.” But can you blame people for trying? After all, Kunis’s career and personal life should have stirred up more controversial anecdotes than this one—she did spend eight years working alongside Hollywood party-boys Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson and, for the past six years, she has been dating notorious child star Macaulay Culkin. And yet… “I don’t go out,” she shrugs. “I mean, I went out when I was, like, 15, 16, 17, but even then it wasn’t like it is now. At the craziest I saw it, it doesn’t even compare to the craziness that goes on today. It’s such a different mentality. Now, it’s like everyone’s showing their underwear.” Instead, Kunis likes to stay in and indulge her inner teenage boy’s passion for gaming. When I skeptically probe the depths of her nerdiness, the Family Guy and Robot Chicken actress lays it down. “Listen, OK—people bust out with, ‘Oh, tee, hee, I’m so nerdy’, right? I don’t openly call myself a nerd because it’s become a cliché, but I really do have the interests of a 12 year-old boy. I have every game console—the Wii, Playstation, Xbox, even Sega. I play World of Warcraft. And board games. It seems to occupy a lot of my time. You play Rock Band for four hours. It’s so much more fun than getting wasted at a bar.” stylist: jenny ricker. hair: mara roszak at the wall group. rachel goodwin for chanel at magnet la. jacket by diesel, dress by gucci. Born in the Ukraine, Kunis speaks ﬂuent Russian (she admits it comes out when she argues with her parents), and stumbled into acting without any idea that it was something someone could actually do for a living. “I had a lot of energy,” she explains (‘has’ would be more appropriate), “and when school ended for the summer, my parents were like, ‘We need to get you into someplace because we can’t afford a babysitter. So they got me into acting classes—but not because they wanted me to be an actress, it was more like, ‘Here’s a lot of kids hanging out together, go hang out with them and learn English.’” The budding actress soon found that her naturally laid-back attitude and keen sense of irony made her well-suited for comedy, although, like acting in general, it was just something she fell into. “I guess I consider myself kind of funny,” says Kunis, who’s about to join the Judd Apatow crew in the upcoming Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and is the voice of Meg on Family Guy. “I ﬁnd myself funny. I don’t know if other people do.” As our conversation winds down, I press Kunis as to how, exactly, she and Culkin have managed to keep it together in an industry speciﬁcally designed to hunt them down. Again, her answer is simple and honest: “Well, A) We don’t talk about it and B) we don’t ﬂaunt it. We’re very healthy when it comes to [our relationship]. We don’t invade each other’s space professionally—we keep it separate. I think that’s the key. And listen, six years later, I couldn’t be in a happier, more stable relationship.” Well, relatively stable—it seems the couple has been house-hunting for over two years with no end in sight. Kunis, who refuses to take Hollywood seriously and admits to being willing to walk away from it, seems hesitant to plant roots in this particularly ﬁckle soil. “I don’t think either of us want to admit, ‘OK, this is it. We’re full-time L.A. people.’” She gathers up her stuff and heads out into an uncharacteristically raw, rainy day. “This is not who I am, just what I do.”

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of NYLON - April 2008

NYLON - April 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Par Avion Behind the Scenes Contributors Happily Ever After Mass Appeal: Punk Mass Appeal: Retro Mass Appeal: Glam Mass Appeal: Watches Haute Stuff Mass Appeal: Denim Private Icon: Shampoo Jeans of the Month Cult Of The Price is Right East Meets West Nesting: Flower Power The Observer Factory Girl: What a Girl Wants Hall of Fame Social Studies Poetry in Motion Beauty Street Style Fashion News Mania: Bottoms Up Directory: Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bella Donna Private Icon Counter Culture 'Tis the Season Beauty News Some Kind of Bliss Rocking Horses The Story So Far Personal Effects And This Bird Can Sing Young Offenders Geek Love Eyes Wide Open The Graduate Film Strips Culture Club En Route: In Vino Veritas Three of Hearts Head Trip The Shape of Things The Great Outdoors Star Maps Shopping List Bag Check

NYLON - April 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.