You want to be honest with a character and play it truthfully, and you want to be genuine with your character. - Mila Kunis

I turned to my kids and I was like, ‘You are half-Ukrainian, half-American!’ I literally was like, ‘Look, you!’ And my kids were like, ‘Yeah mom, I get it.’ And I was like, ‘No! You are Ukrainian and American.’ I was like, ‘You are half-Iowa, half-Ukraine.’ And they’re like, ‘Okay, I get it. It’s been irrelevant to me that I come from Ukraine. It never mattered. So much so that I’ve always said I’m Russian, right? Like I’ve always been, ‘I’m from Russia’ for a multitude of reasons…

I wanted to quit the industry when I was eighteen and finish '70's', finish my contract on the show and go to college because I was pretty convinced that after '70's and after being on a show for eight years that I would be very much pigeonholed for something specific that I didn't want to be a part of anymore. So my attempt at college failed miserably and I dropped out and decided that this is what I wanted to do for a living. When I made that decision I had to convince myself to disassociate myself from the industry, if that makes any sense, to be who I am and to have this just be what I do and that the paths could never cross. If they did then I think that given after '70's it was like a good year of just pure rejection. So if I didn't disassociate myself from what I did I would probably go through depression, I would assume, or go through some hard times. But I didn't and I always had some other things that were more important to me. I had family that was more important. I had my life that was more important. I had hobbies that were more important and this was just my job.

I would say that by third grade I spoke pretty fluent English. I don't remember much of second grade. I've said this before. I was not a traumatized kid, by any means with the way that this might come out, but I pretty much blocked out all of second grade in the states. I'm guessing it was because it was hard and my parents said that I came home crying every night but I don't remember it. I think it was rough because I just didn't know where I was and I didn't get the culture. I didn't get the people. I'll be honest, I never...I met an African American person for the first time in my life when I was seven. I didn't know they existed. I didn't know there were people of a different color. I didn't know people with red hair existed. It wasn't even...it wasn't because I wasn't taught that in school but I think it just wasn't where I grew up. So much of it was, forget the language barrier, just a culture shock. I think adapting to the culture was much harder than actually learning English.