MILA KUNIS only ever wants to work with brands and companies that she truly believes in. The actress, who is the new face of ethical coloured gemstone specialists Gemfields, says that endorsing a product that you don’t believe in is “the hardest job in the world”.

The 29-year-old was announced as the jewellery company’s spokesperson earlier this year, after she was approached by CEO Ian Harebottle. Despite not looking to endorse anything at the time, the actress agreed to commit after “falling in love with the people” that work at the family-run company.

“There’s a difference being part of a family-owned company and being part of a conglomerate – you feel as though you’re a part of something, and you don’t work for them, you work with them,” she told us. “You don’t want to endorse something that you don’t believe in. I’ve done that before and it’s just one of the hardest jobs to do. Why do it? I believe in this company and I believe in what they stand for. Lesson learned, absolutely.”

The Oz The Great And Powerful actress – who has previously starred in campaigns for the likes of Dior and Gap – confessed that she felt less pressure working with a smaller and more tight-knit company like Gemfields.

“Pressure gets taken off you if they trust you and you trust them – then you’re able to play around a bit and have some fun. I think pressure gets put on when there’s a nervousness about where you stand and what you do and who’s the boss,” she said. “That’s when things become a little uneven. I think when you have the same goal, you want to achieve it and make each other proud and happy.”

Kunis admits that she waited until she was able to ensure that Gemfields was a transparent and ethically inclined company before signing up to work with them – and has since paid a visit to their mines in Zambia.

“That was absolutely the most important thing. Anything that has to do with stones I think you want to be a little cautious about,” she said. “They opened their doors wide and just said,’Go ahead’. It was great. They’ve been so great at letting me be a part of anything and everything I’ve been able to. I chose them in the same way that they chose me and I have honestly never worked for a better company.”

GLAMOUR: Tell us about your trip to Africa.

MILA KUNIS: I went to Africa with Ian, the CEO of Gemfields and my friend Kim, to see the company’s work firsthand, and I was blown away. Here’s how you can tell – they bring you into a community and the kids are so excited to see you. The adults are hugging everybody and are so welcoming. They all had such a legitimate relationship with everyone at Gemfields, and were so thrilled to have the team in their homes and their schools. It was all very honest and heartfelt. And I was sold. I feel very proud and connected to what they are doing and I feel great speaking openly about it.

GLAMOUR: How is the work they are doing there different?

MILA KUNIS: They are buying mines, transforming them, and making them very ethical. And when they do, they do it from the ground up. They give local contracts to their employees and set a standard for consistency in the community.

GLAMOUR: Of everything you saw and learned, what was most surprising?

MILA KUNIS: In Zambia, there aren’t paved roads, but the people are all so well educated in their own right, and they care for their environment and their animals so much. They care where things are dumped and how they’re processed, and what we call recycling, they call living. It was a really eye opening experience.

GLAMOUR: What was the best part?

MILA KUNIS: The kids, as cliché as it sounds.

GLAMOUR: Did you visit the schools they’ve built in the community?

MILA KUNIS: Yes I went to schools. They’ve put in electricity, they have books, paper and pens. There are in cement buildings, as opposed to the mud buildings you see everywhere there, and they have chalkboards and tables. They have a place for hundreds of kids to come to. And they are rolling that out more and more.

Another thing they’re doing for the community that I love is teaching the people in the community to garden, so all the local vegetables come from the local gardens.

GLAMOUR: Are you going to go back to Africa?

MILA KUNIS: I hope so, we are planning a trip to Mozambique to look at the ruby mines and meet the people there.

She’s played everything on the big screen from a psychotic serial killer in American Psycho II: All American Girl to a lesbian ballerina in Black Swan, while finding equal success on TV in popular series like That 70’s Show and Family Guy. None of her past experiences, however, prepared Mila Kunis for the challenge she faced playing the witch named Theodora in the new Sam Raimi film, Oz the Great and Powerful. Without giving it away, Theodora changes during the course of the film from a naïve, yet powerful witch experiencing love for the first time to young woman suffering her first heartbreak with surprising results. It’s a role that was made iconic in the popular 1939 version of the story, and, as she talks about in the following interview, Kunis had some very big shoe to fill and they weren’t ruby red slippers.

JOURNALIST: Your character, without giving anything away, has an incredible arc. Earlier (director Sam Raimi) was saying how you kind of came up with the idea of playing your character as a woman scorned. Can you talk a little bit about that process and a little bit about the arc but without giving away too much?

MILA KUNIS: You know it was one of those things where I got very nervous about playing such an iconic character or at least playing a character that had such an iconic end result. I didn’t want to ruin it and I didn’t want to re-create it and I didn’t want to re-interpret it. So in order for me to wrap my head around it, I had to make sense of her origin. And then it was just given to me, kind of like a gift. I mean, here’s a girl who’s incredibly naïve and very young and doesn’t believe she’s almost worthy of love or has never really truly experienced love. She meets (James Franco’s character) and falls madly in love with him, very quickly, mind you, but nonetheless. And then she gets her heart broken and she doesn’t have the emotional tools for dealing with heartache. She doesn’t want to deal with it, so she takes the easy way route given by her sister and goes through an emotional transformation that’s mirrored by a physical one and so happens to change color. I honestly viewed her as just a normal girl who gets her heart broken who just so happens to be a witch that can fly.

JOURNALIST: You’re following in the footsteps of Margaret Hamilton, who’s sort of the last word on wicked witches, but hers is a performance of another era. It’s a very broad and caricature performance. I don’t mean that as a criticism but that’s not something that would fly today. So, I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about how you navigated that previous performance and how you sort of brought-brought it up to date, or brought the character up to date without losing the-the mad cackles and the stereotypical wicked witch.

MILA KUNIS: It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I mean, I’d be lying if I told you that it wasn’t incredibly frightening because it is and she was phenomenal and did create such an iconic character for going on eighty years now, that is so associated with so many things, you know, let alone Oz or Halloween or witches in general, that I wasn’t gonna touch it. And not re-watch “Wizard of Oz”, I didn’t go there because there was no way of me ever doing it justice. And so this is the 21st version of that, I guess, which is maybe … there’s a corset involved and it’s a little tighter and she’s maybe not hunched over so much. But what she did will forever be, in my mind, the greatest witch of all time. It’s like a love letter to her, I guess, in a way.

JOURNALIST: I just wanted to ask about your amazing stunt work ‘because evidently you did a lot of your own work up — way up there — with a broom.

MILA KUNIS: Why, thank you.

JOURNALIST: Are you just a really physical person? Do you keep yourself strong when you’re not doing stuff like that so that when you do it, you really can get on top of it? And was it fun?

MILA KUNIS: I apparently I like it because I keep doing movies that require wires so I guess I had a great time. The truth is it’s not hard. It’s really not hard to be wired and to have somebody else be responsible for the wire work your life. Your only responsibility is to sustain seventeen hours on those wires. I guess I do work out a little bit for that purpose. Like the movie that I’m doing that’s following up this one, I think, requires a lot more wire training than this one did. But at least this one I know prepped me for it. I love it. I have to tell you, I do.

JOURNALIST: Which movie coming up?

MILA KUNIS: The Wachowski movie (Jupiter Ascending. That one requires a lot of wires. A lot. Everything seems to be wired.

JOURNALIST: I just wanted to know how fun it was to play that really over-the-top witch character ‘because obviously that’s not something you would normally play in really any other kind of movie.

MILA KUNIS: Very rarely are you given the opportunity to have such a fantastical character. That’s the truth. And so it’s really fun. Now, I say this because I had incredible actors that I felt safe with and I had the most incredible safety net of Sam Raimi and Joe. I knew that should I maybe not do the greatest of a take, I would be given another one, and another one. And so I was allowed to play around and kind of have that little tennis match back and forth. Well, if you take that away, it’s incredibly frightening because my character does have an end result that is so incredibly iconic that you just don’t want to mess it up. And you don’t want to play around with it too much ‘cause then it becomes something completely crazy and-and not believable. But, oh, God, it’s so fun to be a part of this world. So fun.

Mila on playing the iconic Wicked Witch of the West:
I got very nervous about playing such an iconic character or at least playing a character that had such an iconic end result. And I, and I didn’t want to ruin it and I didn’t want to re-create it and I didn’t want to re-interpret it. And so in order for me to wrap my head around it, I had to make sense of her origin. And, um, and-and then it was just given to me, kind of like a gift. I mean, here’s a girl who’s incredibly naïve and very young and doesn’t believe she’s almost worthy of love, has never really truly experienced love. Meets James’s character. Falls madly in love with him, very quickly, mind you, but nonetheless. And, um, and then gets her heart broken. And-and probably doesn’t have the emotional tools of-of dealing with heartache. Doesn’t want to deal with it. Takes the easy way route, uh, given by her sister. And goes through a-an emotional transformation that’s mirrored by a physical one and so happens to change color. But, um, I honestly viewed her as just a normal girl who gets her heart broken who just so happens to be, um, a witch that can fly.

Mila on playing an over-the-top character:
Very rarely are you given the opportunity to have such a fantastical character. That’s the truth. And so it’s really fun. Now. I say this because I had incredible actors, that I felt safe with and I had the most incredible safety net of Sam Raimi and Joe. Knowing that should I maybe not do the greatest of a take, I would get, be allow, given another one, and another one. And so I was allowed to play around and-and kind of have that little tennis match back and forth. Well, if you take that away, it’s incredibly frightening because my character does have an end result that is so incredibly iconic that you just don’t want to mess it up. And you don’t want to play around with it too much ‘cause then it becomes something completely crazy and-and not believable. But, um, oh, God, it’s so fun to be a part of this world. So fun.

Sam Rami on the best part about witches:
I love making those horror movies but, I was really guided by Mila Kunis’s performance and what her instincts were in playing that character. And she decided that-and I’ve heard her say-that she was playing her like a woman scorned. So even though-even though-and she wasn’t really thinking about the fact that she was green, I think she’s told me she was playing it as an innocent who fell in love and her heart was broken and she suffered and she couldn’t take the suffering and wanted to end that suffering and her sister was all too willing to let that suffering end and it awakened something that was already there but just fueled the fire of-of, uh-I don’t know what you women call it, hatred, anger, mixed with love, jealousy, rage. Rage is a good word. That rage drove her. And I wasn’t tempted to-to make it more like a horror movie. I wanted her to guide us and I would follow her with the camera.

Mila Kunis: I’m not curing cancer but I like to entertain and empower young girls. The star of Black Swan has moved into the big-budget league in a new visit to Oz. And she’s a producer now, too

When Mila Kunis arrived in California from her native Ukraine, aged seven, with her parents (a physics-teacher mother and mechanical-engineer father), her older brother, and $250, she could not speak a word of English. “The first book I ever read in English was Return to Oz”, she recalls. “I was nine or 10, I think. It was the first time I’d read a big book, a real book.”

Two and a bit decades later, her new film, her biggest yet, is Oz the Great and Powerful (a sort of Wizard of Oz prequel, based on Frank L Baum’s classic Oz book series). But she doesn’t get all “it was meant to be”. Kunis isn’t like that. Anyone who saw how she hilariously dealt with the lovestruck, nervous Radio 1 interviewer Chris Stark and his questions about Watford FC and Jägerbombs this week will know that. No, she’s pragmatic, smart and eminently sensible.

“I loved the book,” she continues, not entirely convincingly. “I mean, I’m assuming I loved it. There were a lot of memories. I think it may have had little to do with the content and more to do with the experience.”

Kunis, 29, is big on experiences. For all its kudos and awards, 2010′s Black Swan – the film which thrust her onto a drastically higher pedestal – wasn’t an enormous, expensive Hollywood production. Nor was last year’s unlikely hit, Ted, the most successful adult-rated comedy of all time, from the warped but brilliant mind of Family Guy creator and Oscars host, Seth MacFarlane. It’s easy to imagine other actresses, still slightly ahead of Kunis on the A-list totem-pole, turning up their noses and chastising their agents: “Really? You think I want to star opposite a talking teddy bear?” Kunis laughed first, saw the film’s potential second, and laughed last when the film earned half a billion dollars worldwide.

“I’ve done some horrible movies,” she says, declining, of course, to say which ones she’s referring to.

“For whatever reason, sometimes they just don’t work. But every movie that I do, regardless of the outcome, I’m proud of it going in. You can never predict. It’s all relative – what I think is great, you might think is horrible, what you think is great, I might think is horrible. It’s truly a matter of opinion.”

Despite the occasional dud, at just 29, she’s already forged an impressive, if eclectic, career. (“Eclectic,” she says, “is very polite.”) She’s been as drawn to darker indie fare such as Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, as she has been to post-apocalyptic action films such as The Book of Eli, or to light comedies such as Friends With Benefits and Ted (not to mention giving voice to Meg Griffin on the hugely popular animated series, Family Guy).

“If you look at the films that I’ve done, they don’t make any sense,” says Kunis, adding that she never sticks to one genre because she doesn’t want to “limit” her options.

“They’re all over the place. I take roles because I look at the people who are part of it. If they’re people I respect and admire, then that informs the choices I make.”

Still, Kunis reckons there’s a fair bit of kismet in her landing a role in Oz The Great and Powerful. (Based on the books of L. Frank Baum, the film takes place before the events depicted in The Wizard of Oz.)

‘Oz the Great and Powerful’ stars Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz hit the heights as a new generation of witches. Director Sam Raimi and producer Joe Roth recruited three top actresses for their prequel to 1939′s ‘The Wizard of Oz.’

The cast and crew of “Oz the Great and Powerful” knew they were taking a leap of faith. After all, they were making a prequel to the 1939 classic that the Library of Congress lists as the most-watched movie of all time.

But in Michelle Williams’ case, making the movie, opening Friday, required a more literal leap.

While her fellow witches Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz had the benefit of wearing wire harnesses for their flying scenes, Williams had to hurl herself off a platform for a moment where her character, Glinda, jumps off a cliff.

“For those seconds while you’re free-falling, you feel like you’re jumping off a bridge. Meaning you don’t feel the support of a wire,” she says, able to smile about it now.

Mila talked to Chris Stark off the Scott Mills show on BBC Radio 1 this afternoon. Now you can also watch her video interview – truly hilarious thing

GALLERY LINK:
Interviews & Events > BBC Radio 1 – Scott Mills Show

Mila talked to Collider.COM about playing Theodora as a normal girl who gets her heart broken, making the character her own, the best part about playing a witch, and how much she enjoys doing wire work, which she says she’ll be doing a ton more of on her next project, the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending.

Mila, without giving anything away, your character has an incredible arc. What was your process for finding Theodora?
MILA KUNIS: It was one of those things where I got very nervous about playing such an iconic character, or at least playing a character that has such an iconic end result. I didn’t want to ruin it, and I didn’t want to recreate it, and I didn’t want to reinterpret it. So, in order for me to wrap my head around it, I had to make sense of her origin, which was just given to me, kind of like a gift. Here’s a girl who is incredibly naïve and very young, and almost doesn’t believe that she’s worthy of love, and has never really truly experienced love, and then she meets James’ character and falls madly in love with him, very quickly, mind you, but in love nonetheless, and then she gets her heart broken. And she doesn’t have the emotional tools of dealing with heart ache, and doesn’t want to deal with it, so she takes the easy way, given to her by her sister and goes through an emotional transformation that’s mirrored by a physical one, and she happens to change color. I honestly viewed her as a just a normal girl who gets her heart broken, and who just so happens to be a witch that can fly.

Margaret Hamilton was amazing as The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. How did you navigate that previous performance while making this character your own?
KUNIS: It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I’d be lying, if you told you that it wasn’t incredibly frightening because it is. She was phenomenal and did create such an iconic character, for going on 80 years now, that is so associated with so many things, let alone Oz or Halloween or witches, in general, that I wasn’t going to touch it. I did not re-watch The Wizard of Oz. I didn’t go there because there was no way of me ever doing it justice. So, this is the 21st century version of that, I guess. There’s a corset involved and her dress is a little tighter and she’s maybe not hunched over so much. But, what she did will forever, in my mind, be the greatest witch, of all time. It’s like a love letter to her, in a way.