From That ’70s Show to Oz The Great And Powerful: Looking Back at Mila Kunis’s Maturing Roles

Baywatch (1995)

Kunis’s first TV role was on Baywatch—TV roles, we should say; she guested first in 1994 and then again a year later. In an interview for W magazine, Kunis said, “The second time, I played a blind girl who’s lost in the forest next to the beach and needs to be saved. It was absurd: There’s a fire, I get saved, and then I go boogie-boarding. I remember thinking, Well, if I’m blind, how am I boogie-boarding? No one ever gave me an answer.”

Mila Kunis Pirhana (1995) movie film photo

Pirhana (1995)

Costarring alongside Alexandra Paul of Baywatch fame (the only female character on that show who looked remotely like a lifeguard), Kunis played a daughter in distress in this widely panned remake of a 1978 B-movie horror classic.

Mila Kunis Unhappily Ever After (1996) tv show photo

Unhappily Ever After (1996)

Kunis made a number of TV guest appearances during this period, including this one on The WB's Unhappily Ever After. In case you don’t remember the show, it focused on the dysfunctional family of a man whose best friend is a talking rabbit. No, really.

Mila Kunis Simon Said What? (1997) tv show nickelodeon photo

Simon Said What? (1997)

According to filmmaker Jeff Blyth, Kunis "still had a fairly strong accent" in this unaired pilot for Nickelodeon (doesn’t that just sound like a little bit of Valley girl lilt?). Bluth also wrote that "she'd probably just as soon forget she was in this."

Mila Kunis That ’70s Show (1998-2006) tv show photo

That ’70s Show (1998-2006)

Most of us got to know Kunis on the Fox series That ’70s Show, where she played the entitled, precocious Jackie Burkhart. Just like Kunis herself, who was 14 when the show began, Jackie grew over the series’ eight seasons, from superficial and terribly sure of herself to a (slightly) more gracious young lady.

Mila Kunis Family Guy (1999-present) tv show voice photo

Family Guy (1999-present)

Awkward, insecure, unpopular, desperate to have a boyfriend, and the butt of many family jokes, Meg Griffin (who has been voiced by Kunis since the show’s second season) is basically your typical American teenager—except funnier—in Seth MacFarlane’s long-running animated series.

Seth Poppel/Yearbook Library

Senior Year, Fairfax High School, Los Angeles (2001)

As a high school senior, Kunis looked pretty and demure, quite unlike the high school girls she portrayed on That ’70s Show and Family Guy.

Mila Kunis Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) movie film photo

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

In a cast full of scene-stealers like Russell Brand, Jack McBrayer, and Paul Rudd, Kunis is a standout as Rachel, the receptionist who helps Jason Segel’s Peter forget Kristen Bell’s Sarah Marshall in this Judd Apatow romantic comedy.

Mila Kunis Black Swan (2010) movie film photo

Black Swan (2010)

Kunis takes a serious turn playing Natalie Portman's rival ballerina in the Academy Award-winning Black Swan. Portman recommended her good friend for the role but admitted that it was “awkward” to make out with her in the film.

Mila Kunis Friends with Benefits (2011) movie film photo

Friends with Benefits (2011)

Kunis sparkles in this hit romantic comedy playing Jamie, a headhunter who woos Justin Timberlake's Dylan to take a job as an art director at GQ. Much has been made of the natural chemistry between the movie's stars; could Timberlake-Kunis be the new Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan?

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

Here's Mila in the 2013 film, Oz the Great and Powerful. She went from the witch-like character on That '70s Show to the actual (good) witch, Theodora. Mila will next be seen in 2015's Jupiter Ascending with Channing Tatum.