Mila Kunis has claimed a male movie producer told her that her career was finished when she refused to pose half-naked for a men's magazine.
The Black Swan and Bad Moms star talked about her experiences in Hollywood in an open letter published on A Plus, the website co-founded by her husband Ashton Kutcher. The letter is titled You'll Never Work in This Town Again, with Kunis writing: "A cliché to be sure, but also what a producer threatened when I refused to pose semi-naked on the cover of a men's magazine to promote our film."
"I was no longer willing to subject myself to a naïve compromise that I had previously been willing to," she continued. "'I will never work in this town again?' I was livid, I felt objectified, and for the first time in my career I said 'no'.
"And guess what? The world didn't end. The film made a lot of money and I did work in this town again, and again, and again. What this producer may never realise is that he spoke aloud the exact fear every woman feels when confronted with gender bias in the workplace."
Kunis said that throughout her career, there had been times when she had been "insulted, sidelined, paid less, creatively ignored, and otherwise diminished based on my gender".
"I taught myself that to succeed as a woman in this industry I had to play by the rules of the boys' club," she explained. "But the older I got and the longer I worked in this industry, the more I realised that it's bulls***! And, worse, that I was complicit in allowing it to happen."
"So from this point forward, when I am confronted with one of these comments, subtle or overt, I will address them head on; I will stop in the moment and do my best to educate.
"If this is happening to me, it is happening more aggressively to women everywhere. I am fortunate that I have reached a place that I can stop compromising and stand my ground, without fearing how I will put food on my table. I am also fortunate that I have the platform to talk about this experience in the hope of bringing one more voice to the conversation so that women in the workplace feel a little less alone and more able to push back for themselves."
