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Ashton Kutcher is ready for his close-up. With model looks, a motorcycle as his ride and a computer in hand, he’s taking the world by storm—including the cyber version. A product of the reality-TV generation, Kutcher lives in the daily spotlight of countless video bloggers on Ustream and nearly two million devotees on the micro-blogging site Twitter. This spring he single-handedly beat out CNN in a contest he proposed to the media giant to see who would be first to garner one million Twitter followers. “I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big a voice online as an entire media company can on Twitter,” he says.
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A prankster at heart, Kutcher followed up the stunt by attempting to “Ding Dong ditch” Ted Turner. He couldn’t ring the doorbell of Turner’s high-security ranch and run, so he dropped off boxes of Ding Dongs at Ted’s Montana Grill in Atlanta and shrouded the neighboring CNN Center’s neon sign with a banner displaying his Twitter name. Message received.
“If you look at CNN, they’re not really using the platform insomuch as they’re broadcasting,” he explains. “Part of my success has been in utilizing the collaborative nature in the platform. I’m on there because I want to know what people think. I get sent some of the greatest stuff before anybody else sees it because people are sharing with me and I’m sharing with them. So really, it’s a privilege.”
Kutcher emerged on the television scene in 1998 playing the hilariously dim-witted Michael Kelso on That ’70s Show. The role remains his favorite, though he went on to appear in a host of films, including The Butterfly Effect, A Lot Like Love and the cult favorite Dude, Where’s My Car? He hosted MTV’s Punk’d, a take on Candid Camera, in which the recipients of his practical jokes were celebrities. If his collection of Chicago Bears memorabilia doesn’t affi rm his boyish nature, further evidence includes Ustream footage in which he coaxes random people to pee on-camera for $500.
What really makes him stand out, though, is the breadth of talent he demonstrates in his new fi lm Spread, which he also produced. “It’s a cautionary tale,” he explains. “I wanted to tell a tale about Los Angeles from a different point of view. A tale about the guy who didn’t make it, who didn’t become a star, who didn’t get there.” In Spread Kutcher channels a modern-day American Gigolo, playing a serial womanizer who beds older women for the comforts of their riches. Kutcher plays his character, Nikki, with such lackadaisical precision that one is hard-pressed to sympathize when things don’t go his way. He had no reservations about playing a character in pursuit of May-December romances, complete with dizzying sex scenes, other than being “a little bit freaked out about the amount of nudity.” And he has great respect for costar Anne Heche—a feeling that is decidedly mutual.
