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Loving LA
When she’s not working, Kunis can be found hanging with her dogs: Shorty, a 14-year-old beagle-corgi-dachshund mix, and Audrey, a nine-year-old English bulldog. The actress, who had a breakthrough, big-screen role in 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall and voices Meg Griffin on Family Guy, loves reading, cooking and watching TV in her North LA abode. “I watch just about everything, from Sister Wives and Dexter to Anderson Cooper 360° and all of the food reality shows,” she says. “Remember when Anthony Bourdain did the LA episode for No Reservations? I had been to every single place except for that goat restaurant in East LA. I should go there.” The screen siren—who famously lost 20 pounds from her already petite frame for Black Swan and happily gained it back via In-N-Out burgers, corn-truffle pasta at Santa Monica’s Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi and Russian food from her mom’s kitchen—loves food and is suspicious of anyone who doesn’t. The last thing she made? “Pork stuffed with collard greens and a lot of different spices that you make into rectangular patties and bake in the oven,” she says enthusiastically.

She becomes equally excited when discussing Los Angeles, her home since her family emigrated from Ukraine when she was seven. After the initial culture shock and requisite teasing from fellow grade-schoolers, she became fluent in English within a year, played a young Angelina Jolie in the film Gia and ended up graduating from Fairfax High School while starring on That ’70s Show. “LA gets a bad rap, but it’s what you make of it,” says Kunis. “I have Ventura Boulevard down the street with the best sushi in the world and friends whom I’ve known since I was nine years old.”

It seems for Kunis the only downside of LA living is the paparazzi’s newfound obsession with her. “I’ve never dealt with it on a level like in the last few months. It makes you become a hermit, because normal activities—like picking up laundry or sneezing—suddenly [make you] very self-conscious,” she says. “I love the Internet, but it’s taken away all sense of illusion. If you leave the house you’re screwed, and if you don’t leave you’re screwed.” She credits her strong family with keeping her sane and grounded. “They’re so proud of my brother and me. I think they’re happy we’re happy.”

The paparazzi aside, Kunis wouldn’t trade her current state of affairs for anything. “I’m incredibly blessed. I started acting when I was nine years old, and if you would have told me that, at 27, this is where I’d be, I wouldn’t have believed it,” she says. “I get to do what I love for a living, and I don’t consider it a job. It’s fun and extremely gratifying—I love everything about it.”