What happened to Mila Kunis?

Mila Kunis used to be the kind of star who could turn a $13 million independent movie into a $300 million box office smash, with a couple of award nominations to boot. These days, Kunis is more likely to attract media attention because of her marriage to Ashton Kutcher and her friendship with That ’70s Show co-star Danny Masterson.

That’s not to say Kunis has disappeared. She still has a few streaming hits, including Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, and she will always have the Family Guy sandbox to tap back into every other year. People in Hollywood still hold her work in high regard, but it’s fairly obvious that her relationship with stardom has changed.

Here’s what happened to Mila Kunis.

One-Movie-a-Year Policy

Kunis has been in the industry for a long time. She was born in Ukraine, and her family moved to the U.S. partly because of antisemitism in her home country. They relocated straight to Los Angeles, and from the age of nine, Kunis split her time between auditions and acting classes — often accompanied by her father.

After starting a family of her own, Kunis decided that, alongside Kutcher, there would be a strict parenting agreement: they can’t take jobs that keep both of them away from their children at the same time. On top of that, she committed to doing only one movie a year, typically shooting during the summer. That decision makes it unlikely she’ll take on major studio projects like she once did with films such as Jupiter Ascending and other big-budget blockbusters.

The Danny Masterson trial

Masterson is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence. His case became one of the landmark rulings of the #MeToo era, ending with him being found guilty of two counts of forcible rape stemming from incidents in 2003, during the height of his fame as a co-star of Kutcher and Kunis on That ’70s Show.

Kunis made herself something of a pariah in the industry around the time of sentencing, when she and her husband failed to read the room and wrote a letter to the judge on Masterson’s behalf, asking for leniency. Many fans were stunned when the letter surfaced online, particularly its claim that Masterson had “set an extraordinary standard around how you treat people … always treating people with decency, equality, and generosity.”

The Diddy ties

Sean Diddy Combs’ legal troubles have since receded from the headlines, but when the story first broke — with Cassie Ventura publicly detailing the extent of his alleged abuse — many expected more celebrity names to be implicated.

Kutcher has had a long-standing relationship with Combs, and although prosecutors ultimately framed the crimes as a one-man operation, reputational damage still rippled outward to his associates, including figures like Jay-Z and the Kutcher-Kunis household. Photos of Kutcher at Combs’ all-white parties, along with his past jokes about how much he “couldn’t tell” about those parties only worsened Kunis’ standing in Tinseltown.

Eventually, these controversies led Kunis and Kutcher to resign from their roles at Thorn, an organization focused on combating child sexual exploitation.

Personal health

Kunis has also been open about health issues she’s managed over the past few years. She revealed that she suffered from chronic iritis, which left her blind in one eye. Eventually, she opted for corrective surgery — a decision that likely shifted her priorities away from acting, at least temporarily.

So fans shouldn’t expect to see her headlining a massive studio movie anytime soon. Still, when it comes to actors, a comeback is always just around the corner.