The role Ashton Kutcher admitted “terrified” him
Very much a product of the late 1990s, Ashton Kutcher became a staple of stoner comedies and romance flicks in the early 21st century thanks to the sitcom That ’70s Show, where he starred alongside the likes of Danny Masterson, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace. Unable to entirely escape the success of the eight-season-long comedy, Kutcher more recently appeared in the Netflix reboot, That ’90s Show.
Still, whilst he might have stepped back from the industry spotlight, at one point in the early 2000s, Kutcher was a significant name. After appearing beside Ben Affleck and Charlize Theron in Reindeer Games, and Seann William Scott in the silly stoner comedy Dude, Where’s My Car? in 2000, Kutcher kicked off a career in the middling realms of Hollywood, becoming the host of the viral prank show Punk’d before appearing in the fan-favourite fantasy The Butterfly Effect.
Kutcher later became a serial star in romantic comedies, with the genre becoming his bread and butter in 2008. Though, it was after his string of fluffy love stories, including What Happens in Vegas, Valentine’s Day, Killers, No Strings Attached and New Year’s Eve, that Kutcher would take his most curious role to date.
The American comic actor isn’t exactly the first person who comes to mind when one thinks of the late Apple CEO and technological pioneer Steve Jobs. Yet, the director of the 2013 movie Jobs, Joshua Michael Stern, considered him to be the best choice to play the modern icon in a biopic about the college dropout turned revered creative entrepreneur.
With the role being one of his most po-faced, this was a significant step up for Kutcher, who told The Verge at the time of the film’s release that the challenge was intimidating. “It terrified me, and most of the great things I’ve been able to accomplish in my life were things that terrified me,” he told the publication, knowing many people who had worked with the Apple founder before his untimely death in 2011.
“I almost felt compelled to defensively play the role,” Kutcher continued: “I want to make sure it’s protected. Even if I screw it up and totally bomb it, I love that guy. I love that guy. I’d rather have someone that cared about him screw it up than someone who didn’t”.
Going to great lengths to prepare for the role, Kutcher listened to endless compilations of Jobs’ speaking voice in an effort to capture his exact tone, intonation and pitch. “There were two versions of him, and I got this from a lot of friends of his that I talked to,” Kutcher told the publication. “There was the guy who went on stage and presented things, and then there was the guy who was in the boardroom…I tried to find little snippets of stuff where he wasn’t aware that he was being recorded or speeches that he didn’t think anyone was going to hear, so I could get a little more of who he honestly was”.
Though Kutcher’s performance as Steve Jobs never earned him any recognition, his service to modern Hollywood has certainly earned him a passionate contingent of supporters who will never forget his idiosyncratic comedic roles.
