Mila Kunis and more stars who have tried friends with benefits

Originally appeared on E! Online

Sometimes life really does imitate art.

Such was the case when Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher entirely ignored the core messaging that was at the heart of their separate-but-basically-the-same 2011 rom-coms to take a stab at being friends with benefits—no strings attached.

"I did Friends With Benefits, he did a movie called No Strings Attached," Kunis recounted to Howard Stern in 2016, detailing Kutcher's January 2011 rom-com with Natalie Portman and her July 22, 2011, release opposite Justin Timberlake. "If we just paid attention to these movies, we should know that s--t like this does not work out in real life. Well, we clearly didn't pay attention. We shook hands, we're like, 'Let's just have fun!'"

Diligently following the scripts laid out in each film, about three months in, admitted Kunis, "I was like, 'This isn't fun anymore!'"

And so she paid a visit to her former That '70s Show costar.

PHOTOS Ashton Kutcher & Mila Kunis: Romance Rewind

"I was like, you know what, 'I actually care about you. I don't want to mess anything up so I'm just going to walk away before it becomes too much,'" she explained during a 2018 appearance on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. "And he was like, 'Got it.' And the next day, he showed up to my house and he was like, 'Move in with me' and I said, 'Okay.'"

Not that that every sealed-with-a-handshake pact ends with an 11-years-and-counting marriage and a couple of kids.

Long before he was giving Gigi Hadid a second look, Bradley Cooper was keeping things shallow with a high school BFF.

"Because we are both seniors, I realize that we might as well just enjoy the time we have left before we go to college," the then-intern wrote in a 1993 op-ed for the Philadelphia Daily News. "Because once college hits our relationship will definitely return to 'best friendship.'"

Not that there's an age limit on casual situationships. Dyan Cannon revealed last year that she's been seeing "several" special partners. As she put it to People, "I have friends with benefits, yes."

And if you ask stars like Fran Drescher, Sonja Morgan and The Brady Bunch's Florence Henderson, there are plenty of upsides to that sort of arrangement.

Here's how they play the game.

(Originally published April 20, 2025, at 3 a.m. PT)