Ashton Kutcher million dollar man
Ashton Kutcher first came to our attention as Demi Moore’s toyboy. Now, just eight years later, he is not only a well-known actor but also the world’s youngest media mogul and a campaigner against child slavery
WORDS | ELAINE LIPWORTH PORTRAIT | MATTHEW BROOKES / TRUNK ARCHIVE
PICTURE ASHTON KUTCHER AND APART FROM THE SCORCHING GOOD LOOKS and comic skills, you conjure up the image of his wife, the Hollywood actress Demi Moore. Kutcher, 33, is 16 years Moore’s junior – which made for salacious headlines when they first got together in May 2003 and interest in the actor centred almost exclusively on their relationship. Yet he has more than proved his skills since his breakthrough role as the dim-witted Michael Kelso in That ’70s Show in 1998.
Demonstrating an uncanny ability to tap into the zeitgeist be it in film, business or his prolific charity work, Kutcher created the phenomenally successful MTV show Punk’d, which ran from 2003 to 2007. It was a kind of celebrity Candid Camera, where he flipped our hero worship of celebrity by playing pranks on unsuspecting stars, such as Justin Timberlake and Hugh Jackman. His films – including What Happens In Vegas with Cameron Diaz, The Guardian with Kevin Costner and Valentine’s Day with Anne Hathaway, have grossed over $1.4 billion at the box office. His new movie No Strings Attached is a playful romcom with Natalie Portman.
A record-breaking six million people follow Kutcher on Twitter – where he beat CNN to be the first user with more than a million followers in April 2009, announcing his intention to donate the $100,000 prize money to fighting malaria – and Kutcher is arguably America’s youngest and most powerful global media mogul. Last year, his production company, Katalyst, which produced Punk’d and The Real Wedding Crashers, was named as one of the year’s Top 50 Most Inspiring Innovators by Ad Age. To add a little 21st-century hubris to his X-factor sensibility, Kutcher and his wife recently created the Demi & Ashton Foundation (DNA), campaigning against child sex trafficking. All the above no doubt led Time Magazine to include him, with Barack Obama and Oprah, in its 100 most influential people on the planet list.
Kutcher means business, offering an earnest discourse about his latest projects. “I’m always looking for ways to make other people successful. Everybody’s got an idea for a TV show and I wait for ideas. I am also looking for social comment in my shows. I like staying online because I think you can start surfing the zeitgeist and feel what people are interested in; you can discover micro-trends that are turning into global trends. You can actually find out what the next viral video hit’s going to be before it becomes the next viral video hit – if you can do that you know which idea’s going to work.”
We meet at the Four Seasons Hotel in LA, where the clientele are all too cool – or too jaded – to stare at the celebrities populating the bar. But Kutcher proves the exception to the rule. As the 6ft 3in actor, with his dark, floppy hair and dazzling brown eyes, saunters through the lobby, every head turns. He laughs when I compliment him on his looks. “When I look in the mirror I’m pleased with the way I look, but I try not to think about my appearance a whole lot. My parents gave me good genes. My dad is a handsome son of a gun, and my mom is beautiful. I’ve been the lucky recipient.”
His handshake is firm and friendly as he settles down to chat, taking a swig of the Starbucks coffee that he “bought on the way to the interview”. Wearing jeans, a black polo shirt and a black jacket, he is in high spirits. Much of his latest movie, No Strings Attached, is spent between the sheets with Natalie Portman. They play 20-somethings who try to keep their relationship strictly physical, but before long they discover they want something more. While such a scenario would fulfil most men’s fantasies, Kutcher brings nirvana crashing down to earth, discussing the sex scenes with his leading lady.
“You try to set ground rules and apologise,” he says, amusingly. “Laurence Olivier once said something to the effect of, ‘I apologise if I get aroused and I apologise if I don’t’. There’s always that awkward state of, ‘Is this Ok? Is that OK?’ In between you act like nothing happened, then you see how good an actor you really are.”
What’s on his mind when he is being captured on film naked? “I don’t think I’m unusual in wondering when the word ‘cut’ is going to be said. You’re thinking: ‘How far are we taking this?’ I was shooting so many sex scenes I was getting tired of it. I never thought anything related to sex would be something I would get tired of.”
Kutcher is currently enjoying the kind of success and contentment he never even dreamed about growing up poor in rural Iowa, the son of a factory worker father, while his mother worked for Procter & Gamble. When he won a place at university to study biochemical engineering, he swept up Cheerios in the local cereal factory where his father worked and skinned deer in a butcher’s shop to pay for his tuition and help support
the family. “You don’t appreciate anything until you earn it,” he says. “I used to make $4.65 an hour. I washed dishes in a restaurant, I did masonry, I worked in a grocery store and a bank. I have always had a job since I was 12.”
His parents divorced when he 13. There was never enough money and attention was focused on his twin brother, Michael, who has cerebral palsy and had a heart transplant after a viral inflammation. “It made me value life and realise it could end in a second. It also gave me an appreciation of everyone’s personal journey. To pity someone for their struggle is to be ignorant of their struggle,” says Kutcher, who also has a sister, Tausha.
During his childhood, there was a pivotal moment when he could have taken a different path. “I was a relatively good, hardworking kid 90 percent of the time, then occasionally I’d get into trouble. I did stupid stuff. For one minute I thought the easy way out was the best way out. It was a simple oversight. I just wanted to get some money fast, so I broke into my high school.”
He got caught. “The night I spent in jail was enough to make me change my life. It was very upsetting. I was in the ‘drunk tank’, even though I hadn’t been drinking, surrounded by a bunch of drunk fools. I am one of the people who only had to spend one night in jail to realise that it was not where I wanted to be. After that, I stopped doing the stupid stuff, probably because I realised the attention I was getting wasn’t the attention I wanted.”
Kutcher comes across as sincere and deeper than most imagine. “It made me aware there is not such thing as a bad kid. There are just good kids who occasionally make bad decisions. When I talked to kids in juvenile detention [with the organisation Success For Kids], I identified with these troubled kids. I told them: ‘I am the guy who sat in jail; I am the guy who walked around town with my baseball cap down because I was ashamed of myself; I am the guy who tried drugs.’ When I was kid, yeah, I did all that. Meanwhile, the world has accepted me as a successful person. Some people may not like my work, but in some ways I have become a role model. So, remember, the next time you think of one of those kids as bad, they are just like Ashton. I was that guy 100 percent and I turned my life around. I am proof that when you stop making bad decisions, you can become a really well-adjusted, happy person.”
Kutcher’s fortunes changed after he was spotted by a talent scout in 1997. He won the Fresh Faces of Iowa competition, dropped out of college and, at 19, moved to New York where he modelled for Calvin Klein. He has a strong work ethic, instilled as a child: “I am a workaholic. When opportunities arise, I want to seize them.”
As he was focusing on his career, a relationship was the last thing on his mind when he met Demi Moore. “Let me put it this way,” he says, “I was creating as much of a ruckus as I could. We met in New York where I was hosting Saturday Night Live. At the time I was saying to myself: ‘I’m just gonna have a good time’… and then I met Demi. From the get-go, it was more than friendship. I love that she still sees the world every day like something new.”
On the night the couple met in 2003, he was partying after splitting with the starlet Brittany Murphy. Not long after, he traded his old life as a boulevardier for the cosy set-up in the Hollywood Hills, in the mansion he shares with Moore and her daughters. “I think it’s fate,” says Kutcher, who describes his wife as ‘kind and caring’. “Anyone who is looking for a relationship can’t find one, but as soon as you let go of the need or desire, it’ll show up in your face, just like that.”
Kutcher was already a familiar face from his TV shows and film roles, but his marriage to Demi Moore in 2005 led to a new level of celebrity. “There used to be lots of paparazzi following us around every day. Well if I’m going a be in a zoo, I want the keys to the cage. So with twitter, I can saturate the market with images of myself, and devalue all paparazzi images. Except for the rare occasion they don’t follow us any more. I definitely try to lead the long tail of the press. If I’m going to an event, I break the story myself. I don’t need somebody making money from a story about me. I can post a picture to the internet faster than they can, so theirs lose value. Twitter has changed everything. I post anything from a random thought to a photograph, to something I find funny or inspiring or entertaining.”
As well as taking on Demi’s three daughters (Rumer, 22, Scout, 19 and Tallulah, 17), he also inherited the more dubious prize of former husband – formidable Hollywood hardman Bruce Willis. Kutcher confesses to trepidation about entering an extended family with two pretty big stars. But apparently, after a tentative start, the two men are now firm friends: “At first it was difficult. You think, ‘He’s the guy who used to sleep with my wife’, but once you overcome the jealousy, which is all just your own personal insecurity, it gets easier. Bruce is now one of my favourite people to spend time with.”
Kutcher is a disarming mix of humility and sweetness. “I think that if at one point in time you cared about someone enough to marry them, even if it was the wrong marriage, then just because the relationship breaks down doesn’t mean that person is not good,” he says sagely about Moore’s marriage to Willis.
“You also understand that any personal mistakes he may have made towards somebody I care about weren’t intentional or malicious. It’s about forgiving. People ask us: ‘How do you guys get on so well?’ Well, I don’t like everything Bruce does and I am sure he doesn’t think everything I do is great. But being with him is normal to me – he’s great. We go scuba diving, skiing, hang out with the girls together, watch movies, talk about sport.”
They also share the responsibility of raising Bruce and Demi’s adult daughters. “All three of our girls are dating and it’s hard. It’s the most difficult task of my entire life, because I don’t trust any of these guys. There’s no guy on earth who is good enough to be with these girls,” he says, his eyes lighting up. “But you know, I think the greatest thing Demi and I do for the girls, as far as dating goes, is to treat each other with respect. I would want my girls to date guys who treat people with courtesy and respect. By demonstrating that in our relationship with one another, I think we set a very high standard.”
Clearly a devoted stepfather, Kutcher says that, over the years, he has made sure the girls were raised to like getting a job and saying: ‘I got a job. I don’t have to make an effort anymore’, but then you’re not going to keep the job long. Being in a partnership takes work. So when communication breaks down, instead of creating space between each other, playing ‘the blame game’ or having days when we don’t talk to each other, we talk and find another way to give to each other. We actively share our lives together. I’d do anything for my wife.”
Romance, he says, is never far from his thoughts. “Romance coincides with effort. So you can fall flat on your face, but as long as you’re making an effort it comes off as romantic. It can be something as simple as someone who doesn’t cook making a meal. It’s anything that has vulnerability in it and requires effort.”
So what is the most romantic thing he’s ever done? “Well, it was a while ago,” he says, smiling. “You know I’m a bit of a workaholic. I was once in a different country and I had one day off. So I flew back to LA just to see someone for an hour. Then I turned around and went back to work.” Was that for Demi? He raises an eyebrow and smiles enigmatically. Very Cary Grant.
appreciate their privileged lifestyle. “I wanted them to have the experience of doing physical, blue-collar labour like I did. Scout and Rumer both worked at the Marc Jacobs store,” he says, aware of the irony of his statement (the exclusive Beverly Hills store has hardly anything in common with the cereal factory in Iowa). But he adds that the girls “know what it’s like to graft. I had Rumer work on a construction site with my dad for a while and Scout just went to Guatemala, working for Habitat for Humanity, and helped to build a house. Look, it’s easy to ride on a private plane and have no idea how much that costs. Once you understand that a flight from New York to Los Angeles and back costs a good chunk of the average annual income of an American, suddenly you start to appreciate the lifestyle.”
Are they considering having children of their own? “I think some day we would really like to do that, but that’s about nature running its course. I don’t know about right now because I am busy working. When the time is right that is really something we would like to try to do.”
Considering that Moore is pushing 50, adoption seems like a realistic possibility. “I have thought about adopting a kid my whole life,” he says. “When I was eight I had a friend called Terry and one day he told me he was adopted. He said his parents told him that there was a more special bond between them, because they picked him. I thought that was pretty profound and I would be open to the idea. And, in a way, I’ve sort of had that gift and opportunity with our girls.”
He claims the balance he’s found is the result of a happy marriage, but also his spiritual studies. The couple also devote considerable time to charity work. “My wife and I just started our own charity called DNA Foundation (demiandashton.com) to stop human trafficking, which is modern-day slavery. There are 27 million slaves in the world today and that’s despicable. There are children who are five and six years old working in brothels, being molested every single day by grown men, and I don’t think I can live in a world where that exists and not do something about it. Our goal is to eliminate slavery. You do it by talking to leaders; you have to create awareness to educate people that it’s happening. Then you find the people engaging in these activities and prosecute them.”
