Mixed emotions

"IMAGINE,” says Hollywood actress Mila Kunis, “me saying, ‘nice to meet you, now take off your clothes and let’s have sex with a hundred people watching’.”

This isn’t an invitation but an illustration of the reality of doing a sex scene for the movie cameras. Like the one in Black Swan where Kunis gets up close and personal with Natalie Portman’s fellow ballerina. “It was just as nerve-racking as having any other sex scene in any other movie. Sex scenes are always going to be a bit uncomfortable,” she says.

She took the ballet scenes in her stride too while admitting she has two left feet and no rhythm. “I do not consider myself a dancer and never will,” she says, although she looks pretty nifty on her feet as rival to newly-promoted prima ballerina Nina (Natalie Portman).

Learning to look and move like a ballet dancer was just part of the acting process for the Hollywood actress who began acting in TV commercials and featured in two of Fox’s most successful series, That 70s Show and as the voice of Meg in Family Guy.

Training for Black Swan was all-consuming.

“With any film once you start prepping production that’s pretty much what’s your doing all the time. We did seven days a week, training four hours a day. Then you’d come home and soak in the tub for four hours. So that’s pretty much your entire day, definitely no time for anything else.”

She hasn’t kept up the training. “It was much easier to stop than to start. I had no problems not dancing and going back to eating,” she says.

Before she’d even read the script, she told director Darren Aronofsky that she’d do anything in the film. “I’d do craft services (catering) if he needed me to because he’s such a brilliant director. Having read the script, I wanted to do the film that much more,” she says With films such as The Book Of Eli, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the upcoming Friends With Benefits opposite Justin Timberlake coming soon, Kunis is one of Hollywood’s hottest properties although the competition among young actors is nowhere near as intense as in the ballet world.

“I can’t even put it towards you how competitive the ballet industry is,” she says.

Why’s that? “Because it’s so incredibly small – and they work their entire lives to achieve a perfection that’s never going to be possible.

And their career ends at 30, 35 at best. How many prima ballerinas can you name? It’s very small world, creatures all of their own kind.”

She was raised in Communist Russia until her parents decided they want her and her older brother “to have a future”, something was in doubt for a Jewish family at that time.

So the family went to the US, where her acting career came about completely by accident.

She was nine, new to the US and her parents wanted her to meet children her own age.

“They said we’ll send you to a little class where you can make friends and learn English, but I ended up at an acting class for little kids.

“And this is where luck comes in – my manager, who is my manager to this day, I was nine and I’m now 27 so it’s 18 years – was there and saw me.

“My parents were like ‘we don’t want you to be an actor, we want you to be a doctor or lawyer’. And I was like that’s fine, this will be like an afterschool activity. Then I ended up getting the first commercial I went up for. So from nine to 14 I worked pretty steadily, then I got a TV show. So it all kind of happened organically.”

She didn’t think about acting as a lasting career until her early 20s. “I thought when That 70s Show ends I was going to be done, go to college and study whatever, and live a normal life.

“Then, when I made the conscious decision to make this my career, everything changed. I began look at scripts differently and tried to make something long-lasting.”