It is exceedingly difficult to extricate oneself from Mila Kunis's eyes. The 25-year-old beauty from That '70s Show and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is telling me over lunch that she was almost bombed in Haifa two years ago, that she's lived in the same low-key West Hollywood neighborhood since her parents left the Ukraine, and that she had to learn English at age seven. And I'm thinking, Those eyes are colossal, otherworldly, depthless. "We heard the sirens and had to go to the bunker underneath our hotel," Kunis says, tucking one leg up in her chair. "My Irish Catholic boyfriend wanted to get out, but I was so into being in Israel that I was like, 'Not cool, man! These are my people!'"
Avoiding shellings in the homeland may have prepared her for her first action role: beating up Mark Wahlberg in this month's video game adaptation, Max Payne. It's another big step up from sitcom land, and yet Kunis is staying grounded. "Oh my God, it's so exciting," she says of her typical day: reading the Drudge Report, watching Oprah, and nesting with the boyfriend (if you keep up with the tabloids, he is Macaulay Culkin, but if you're having a conversation with her, he's "the pale, short Irish guy"). In fact, Kunis chose the restaurant we're in because it's around the corner from her house. When I say that these rendezvous often take place in très chic locales like the Chateau Marmont or the Four Seasons, she cringes: "Parking at those places is 20 bucks! That's ridiculous." So she is also a woman of principle.
