Featured Image Credit: Instagram/Alamy
Topics: Film and TV, Entertainment, Ukraine, Russia
Dominic Smithers
Topics: Film and TV, Entertainment, Ukraine, Russia
Mila Kunis was forced to escape Soviet Ukraine when she was just seven years old, having suffered persecution under the communist regime.
The actor was born in the city of Chernivts, in the south west of the country in 1983, along with her elder brother Michael.
At the time, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, aligned with Russia and in the midst of the Cold War with the United States and the West.
In 1990, with the hope of giving Mila and her brother a better life, her parents, Mark, a chemical engineer, and Elvira, a physics teacher, decided to move to the US, with just a couple of hundred dollars in their pockets.
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Speaking to the Los Angeles Times back in 2008, the 38-year-old opened up about her formative years behind the Iron Curtain.
She said: 'It was very communist, and my parents wanted my brother and me to have a future, and so they just dropped everything. They came with $250.'
On her move to America, she explained: 'Ultimately, I adjusted fairly quickly and fairly well. But it must have been hard, because I blocked out second grade completely. I have no recollection of it.
'I always talk to my mom and my grandma about it. It was because I cried every day. I didn't understand the culture. I didn't understand the people. I didn't understand the language.'
As well as seeing it as a way of giving their children more opportunities, Mila's parents had suffered back in Ukraine because of their faith.
She told the Daily Telegraph: 'After the Holocaust, in Russia you were not allowed to be religious. So my parents raised me to know I was Jewish. You know who you are inside. When I was in school, you would still see anti-Semitic signs.'
She added: 'One of my friends who grew up in Russia, she was in second grade. She came home one day crying. Her mother asked why, and she said on the back of her seat there was a swastika.
'This is a country that obviously does not want you.'
But despite not having much money to their name when they arrived in the US, Mila's parents spent almost all the money they had to pay for her acting classes.
Speaking to Howard Stern in 2016, she said: 'I always thought it was like $250 and my parents had like $900, and my mom and I were doing this interview and I learned that it was $890 and my parents had $900 in their bank account.'
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and sent his troops across the border, she and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, have been doing their bit to help those most in need.
So far, they have raised more than $18 million for their 'Stand With Ukraine' campaign, which is more than halfway towards their goal of $30 million.
In the video, Mila said: 'UPDATE!! 15 million. We are halfway to our goal. Thank you for the support!
'We just wanted to give you a quick update as to where we stand with the fundraising. We're halfway through.
'We're super-excited, and we want to say thank you to each and every single one of you. It's been an incredible past 48 hours.'
If you would like to donate to the Red Cross Emergency Appeal, which will help provide food, medicines and basic medical supplies, shelter and water to those in Ukraine, click here for more information