Mila Kunis from “Third Person” talks about her acting tips

By: Izumi Hasegawa   June 20, 2014

In my memory of interviewing Mila Kunis, she is always nice and sweet but very sharp. So I really like having time with her. However, at the press conference for her new film Third Person, she was quite different. She might have had some pregnancy morning sickness or maybe she changed with her fame like other celebrities have done (if so, it is sad)? She seemed like she was not in a good mood and just shut off any pregnancy-related questions even though she played a mom in this film.

Q: Is this your first time playing a mom?

It’s my second time playing a mom. The first time I played a mom was also with James Franco. We had a blond child. He was blond and blue eyed in a movie that maybe nobody has seen called Tar. James and I, yes he played my husband, but we had a blond boy baby in this movie, so we can disregard that part. This movie, where we had a baby, it’s feasible. It was fun.

Q: What is the most interesting thing about being a mom?

I’m not one yet, but I’ll let you know when it happens.

Q: Are you able to leave everything behind when you have to play a dramatic role or do you keep living it?

I’m more on the side of, “Hey, what are we having for lunch?” This is purely my own take on it. I will live it for those twenty minutes that I’m on set that I need to live it, but it’s called acting for a reason, but it’s just me. I’ll remind you that there are people that are really close to me that use a very different method that I live with, and that’s great. I feel like if I did a good job, I’m emotionally drained by the end of the day. I don’t want to keep living it. I want a glass of wine and I want to go to bed. If that is the day that I had in this film, every day, I was so emotionally drained, by the end of it I was like, “Oh Lord, Jesus Christ, I just want to go home.” You’re just tired. So you don’t even have the energy to be like, “I’m going to keep on going with my depressed character home.” You don’t even want to. You don’t even want to think about it. Then the next day you show up to work and it’s, “Here we go again.” But it’s great, it’s a very selfishly gratifying thing. But for lunch, I was ready to eat lunch and snap into it. I also come from this. I do a lot of homework before I show up to set, everything done, marked out, my script will have a thousand words on it that ultimately will never make sense to me six months later. Then I show up to set and I forget everything and I disregard it and I go with the flow of things because a long, long time ago, with a director, we talked so much about muscle memory. If you just have muscle memory and you know your character inside out, then you just show up and you become present because then things change. It’s more like a tango, a dance with your partner on set instead of acting against a white wall. If you’re going to come in, “This is what I’m going to do, this is what I have written down and I’m going to do this speech pattern,” then you’re done. You’re putting yourself six feet under. So that’s what I don’t do. I show up and see what everybody else does, then I have chow mein. I do a lot of homework before and then I disregard it. That’s my horrible take on it, but might I remind you, I am not a trained actress. I did not go to Julliard. No one should listen to me ever. It’s just the process that works for me and probably nobody else.

Third Person opens June 20th in theaters.