Guess Who's the rising star
Apr 22 2005 By Robin Walker, The Journal
The way male model-turned-actor Ashton Kutcher sees it, the media has turned him, rather than his work, into the show.
His high-profile relationship with Demi Moore, 42, has attracted attention to the boyishly handsome 27-year-old in ways his acting hasn't.
With two films coming out, he would like to focus attention on his screen work. Instead, he has to field questions on rumours that mother-of-three Demi is pregnant.
"Why am I the last person to find out everything?" he jokes, trying to deflect the question. "I mean, if Demi is pregnant, she's certainly not showing it. That would be news to me."
His two-year relationship with Demi has - of course - been a major source of media interest, and he'd much rather it wasn't.
"I don't like talking about it at all," says the lanky star. "It can get real awkward but I don't have anything to hide. I have no skeletons I'm worried about.
"There's no way I could have ever anticipated this kind of exposure. There's a bizarre shift taking place in the need to write about people's relationships."
Being labelled Hollywood's top toy-boy overshadows the fact the actor has steadily built up big-screen work in parallel with his seven years in TV as dim-witted Michael Kelso in That '70s Show.
While films like Dude, Where's My Car?, Just Married and Cheaper By the Dozen didn't impress the critics, at least he has been working steadily, although his attempt to lend gravitas to his image with last year's thriller The Butterfly Effect had mixed results.
Now he's back with a comic update of the 1967 classic Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, which starred Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier, and told the tale of a wealthy white family confronted with their daughter's black fiancé. This time round, the film is entitled Guess Who, and the racial angle is reversed with Ashton as the white guy having to deal with a black father, played by Bernie Mac.
"The real trick was finding the relevance for that story today because it's a different climate," says Ashton. "It's still something that needs to be addressed, this general racial profiling."
It's also about that universal battle-zone, taking a date home for the first time to meet the parents.
The actor stays quiet about his first meeting with Demi's ex-husband Bruce Willis, although by all accounts everyone gets on fine these days. Demi has three daughters, aged 11-16, with Willis.
"Every kid has to eventually meet their significant other's parents and every parent has to eventually meet their children's pursuer," he shrugs.
Parental rejection isn't something the likeable Ashton has suffered: "I usually do pretty good off the bat, that first impression thing. My mom worked on that with me when I was a kid. If you love the person, that's all parents really want to see and you don't really have to impress anyone."
The big issue in re-making such a well-loved screen classic was treating the original film with the respect it deserved, says Ashton.
"I respected what it did for inter-racial relationships at the time. The first thing was `let's just take this premise and the heart and the soul and do that'."
The interracial issue isn't yet resolved and the film reflects that, he says. "People think it's all even now, everybody is starting to get comfortable with it. When you see the movie there's that scene at the dinner table when everybody gets a little bit uncomfortable. You realise it's not all even yet."
For anyone who dismisses Ashton as a pretty-boy product of fame, it's interesting to remember that had he not been spotted by a talent scout in 1997 and lured into modelling he would probably be a biochemical engineer today.
The 6ft 3in teen was studying at the University of Iowa when modelling came calling. That led to the series That '70s Show and Hollywood opened its doors.
"I would probably have gone into genetic engineering and I think I would be happy no matter what I was doing," he maintains.
But it doesn't look like he'll have to prove his statement thanks to a steady work-load which will see him following up Guess Who with another romantic comedy opposite Amanda Peet in A Lot Like Love, out this summer: "It's pretty different from Guess Who, it's a little more grounded. A bit more of a love story."
And he'll have more time to dedicate to his film career - and his relationship of course - as this year sees the last season of That '70s Show. That will take away an important part of his working life and particularly his rise in Hollywood, admits Ashton.
"It's exciting and a little scary. It has been like my safety net for seven years. They're really my family out here. I still have my show on MTV and I'm still producing television shows.
"I'll always be involved with the best medium in the world if you're going to reach millions of people on a weekly basis."
