THIS IS HOW HE ROLLS
Talking with the impossibly pretty Ashton Kutcher
Interview by Fred Topel

In romantic comedies like What Happens In Vegas, two mismatched lovers spend the whole movie fighting, only to realize they love each other after all. It makes for a cute story, but star Ashton Kutcher does not believe real life works like that. He credits the success of his marriage to Demi Moore to their similarities.

“I don’t think opposites attract,” Kutcher says. “I think like attracts like. So I don’t think that they do attract, opposites. Only when you’re talking about magnetic poles. I think in order to create affinity with something, you have to be like it. There’s actually a whole lot of neurolinguistic programming stuff that has actually proved that as well, so I would say that that’s the key.”

While his costar, Cameron Diaz, plays a high-powered executive to his commitment phobic slacker, they had more in common behind the scenes. “I mean, to show up to work and have to look at a good looking woman who’s funny and happy to be alive and joyous and nice to people, that’s a nightmare,” he jokes. “We had to deal with it every single day. You know, I don’t think that there’s anybody like her. I think she’s maybe the only, I would say, true comedic leading lady in our business right now, that has really honed that craft. And she’s worked with Jim Carrey, she’s worked with Adam Sandler, she’s worked with Mike Myers. She’s worked with every great comedic actor I can think of, so she’s got a one up on all of us.”

Kutcher’s and Diaz’s characters end up married after a night of drunken fun in Las Vegas. When they win a jackpot, the court orders them to try to make it work for six months before they will award marital assets in a divorce. Kutcher could relate to the drunken spiral.

“I’ve had my entire ’20s, my early ’20s to really prepare for that scene. I have a lot of life experience to draw on for that kind of wild night. Most of it was actually directly scripted events of this takes place then this takes place then this takes place. I’d say the moments in between are kind of organic or original, but really from roll the dice to talk at the dance floor, to the dialogue that it was, the fire and fall off the bar, make out, in bed, wake up. The only thing they cut out was there was a three-way with a maid that got cut out of the film, but that was in the script.”

Though Kutcher is happily married now, he was once like the character he plays in the film. “I never really thought I would get married. I watched my parents go through a divorce and I thought like this is just not something people are supposed to do. On top of that, I sort of thought, ’Why am I going to put a legal document on top of a really great relationship? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.’ I don’t do legal documents with my friends. I don’t go out and do a contract, ’Let’s go down to the courthouse, because now that we’re friends, we need to verify our friendship. Now we need to verify it and we need to get a license to watch the game together from here on out.’”

It was only meeting that special someone that changed Kutcher’s mind. “I never really understood the whole idea of marriage until I met my wife and just knew that that was going to be the person I was going to be with for the rest of my life. I knew that I had that desire and kind of took the time to understand a little bit more of what it was about and what it meant. I love it.”

Fear of commitment and drunkenness were not the only characteristics Kutcher shared with his latest movie character. The obsessive need to best his spouse at the marriage game related to his real life obsessions.

“I’m a very competitive person and I think that’s sort of part of the core of the movie and the core of the character. I hate losing anything ever. No, no, no, I hate losing anything ever. I get really upset. Not upset with somebody else, I get really upset with myself and then I become sort of obsessively geared towards never letting that happen again.”

Kutcher’s Vegas experiences were milder by comparison. He’s certainly gotten himself into trouble, but nothing that lasted beyond the Strip.

Gambling is probably the worst thing I’ve ever done in Vegas. I’ve had some really, really wild fun nights in Vegas. I ended up on stage once with this band, The Digital Underground, doing the Humpty Dance. My job was to do the ’Oh do me baby’ part of the Humpty Dance. I was next to Ron Jeremy and rapping to a sea of porn stars. Wild night. They have this thing called the Video Software Dealers [Association] Awards and they do it the exact same time as the AVN [Adult Video News]. I was there for not the AVN, the other, Video Software Dealers Awards. It just turned into a wild night, but I didn’t get married.”

While the wedding scene in What Happens In Vegas is a funny drunken stupor, Kutcher’s real life wedding was much more carefully planned. “Mine was very private. We had to set up my whole wedding under the cloak of darkness and very secretively because I didn’t want a lot of photographers there hanging out.”

Even so, the best-laid plans did not always go accordingly. “It was like 45 people and we told everyone it was a housewarming party, so literally people didn’t even know. Some people, I think my mom included, didn’t know they were coming to a wedding. Actually, a funny story, I told my mom, ’Mom, it’s a really special housewarming, like really, really special housewarming.’ I was on jury duty the week of my wedding and my mom showed up while I was on jury duty and she walked in when Demi was trying on her dress. Demi puts on the veil and my mom walked in, she’s like, ’We don’t wear dresses like that to housewarming parties where I come from.’ Demi almost didn’t marry me. She was so upset with me. I thought that I’d really gotten the hint across but apparently I didn’t.”

The Kutcher-Moore marriage is going on longer than many predicted. Fortunately, there is no secret. Kutcher is just employing beliefs that will be available to all.

“My friend, Yehuda Berg, actually just wrote a book called “The Spiritual Rules of Engagement,” that is coming out really soon. It lays out, as far as I am concerned, the secrets to a happy marriage. I think at the core of it, it’s about working on it. I think guys grow up and from a very young age are taught the sort of goal, the apex of a relationship is sex. So guys are like, from a very young age are like, ’Some day, I’m gonna have sex!’ Like that’s the goal, right? And I think that women from a very young age, are socially conditioned to say, ’Some day, I’m gonna get married,’ right? It’s all about the wedding and the gown. They are socially conditioned to find those two goals and I think neither sex is socially conditioned to have the desire to be married. It’s to get married, to have sex, but everybody’s missing what happens after that, because the goal of being married is a lot of work. If people start the desire to work on their relationship, and set that as the goal, we’d be a lot better off.”

Could we close with a metaphor? “If you got a new job, right, and you got hired at the new job, and you showed up and you didn’t work, you’d probably get fired pretty quickly. I think people think that once they get married, all right the work’s done, when really you just got the job.”•••

Fred Topel is a regular contributor to EDGE.