Former model, sitcom sensation and celebrity prankster Ashton Kutcher packed a lot into his first thirty years. A bigshot TV producer with a widely-desired wife and international movie stardom, his boyish charms and irresistibly cheeky smile have earned him everything he could possibly want in life. Refreshingly unguarded and eager to please, Kutcher is open to a fault.
"I, er, pee outside," he admits with at least a degree of caution, after being asked about his least appealing domestic habit. "I usually start my day with a pee in the yard outside my house. Every morning I take my dogs out, and when they go, I go. I feel like a caveman. Like I'm connecting with nature. Maybe that's weird, I don't know. Does nobody else do that?" Almost certainly, though few would admit it so publicly.
Anxious to move the conversation out of the gutter and off the lawn, Ashton switches topics to the differences between men and women. Like most romcoms, What Happens in Vegas is a battle of the sexes, and even though he's doing very well for himself as an actor and producer, Kutcher seizes the opportunity to try his hand at stand up comedy.
"I don't understand shopping," he begins with a shrug. "It doesn't make any sense to me. When a guy decides he wants something, he'll go out and buy it. He's at home, he's working on something, he needs a wrench, so he goes out and buys a wrench. But women go shopping without any idea what they're going to buy, or even what stores they're going to visit. It's like going to a football game to maybe watch a game. It's a whole different sport. It's like when women go shoe shopping, often all they want to do is just look at shoes. I don't get it at all."
Rather less complex but decidedly funnier than divergent retail philosophies is the plot of Ashton's movie. Marrying on a whim in Vegas, two strangers with nothing in common come to their senses when the booze wears off. About to call it quits, one wins a $3 million jackpot with the other's quarter.
"Maybe in the UK I could get a loaf of bread for $3 million," quips Ashton, devastated by the exchange rate. "People are so unimpressed with that amount of money over here."
Back in New York, the pair are forbidden to divorce and split the funds by an old-fashioned judge sick of quickie marriages and brisker divorces. Sentencing the couple to six months hard marriage, What Happens in Vegas is a love story in reverse, and really Ashton and Cameron couldn't be more adorable as the reluctant couple.
The question is, could marrying in reverse ever work? Is there anything to be said for getting hitched to a stranger and only then getting acquainted? "Well what we're all normally doing doesn't seem to be working very well," says the philosophical star, "so why not do something different?"
A happily married man for going on two-and-a half-years, Ashton has insight to spare. "The biggest problem in relationships is we're not prepared for them," he suggests. "Basically, guys are raised with the goal of having sex. It's like, 'Some day I'm going to have sex, and then I'll be a man, and that'll be my life.' Women have a different focus, but actually it's just as narrow. For them, it's all about the wedding day. It's like, 'Some day I'm going to find a man, and we're going to get married.'
"What we're missing is the bigger picture," explains Kutcher, building to his point. "Nobody seems to have the goal of being married. It's not about the sex, and it's not about the event. It's about walking around the house in your robe and slippers with your gut hanging out. That's the goal we should be working towards. It isn't always pretty, but that's when you find out who's got the guts for married life."
Working his way through the themes of the movie he's so dutifully and enthusiastically promoting, Ashton switches from relationships to alcohol, specifically acts of stupidity committed under the influence. "The worst thing I've ever done drunk is not a PG story," says the star with a smirk, adding that these days, it takes quite a bit of booze to get the better of him. "At my company Christmas party I beat the youngest guy there in a beer drinking competition," he volunteers proudly, adding, "and I'm pretty sure I could beat you!"
"There's a really big, long list of stupid things that I've engaged in while drunk. Probably the dumbest thing I ever did while drinking was while I was at college. Between the campus where I lived and the bars where I drank there was a river. It was winter, the river had just frozen over, and there were no tracks on the ice yet. It can't have been very thick. So my buddy dared me to walk across it, which I of course did, but I only made it about half way before slipping up, falling over and passing out. For like, at least a couple of hours. When I woke up, I went to find my friend, and I was like, 'Dude, why didn't you come get me?' And he was like, 'I thought it would break with two of us on it'. And it could have. It probably would have. Thinking back about it now, that not very bright of me. Definitely a bad drinking experience."
Keen to prove there's more to him than binge drinking and public exposure, Ashton shifts focus to a more appealing quality: apparently he's quite handy around the house. "Oh yeah," says the star without a trace of false modesty, "I can swing a hammer!
"My dad's a carpenter and my step dad's a carpenter and I started working in construction when I was 12-years-old. My stepdad and I built a house together and I have a company with my dad where we remodel houses. Before we shot the movie I actually went to New York to work for a closet company. My character is a closet maker, so I figured I ought to know his business, and spent a couple of days in Brooklyn installing people's closets!"
Though Kutcher's dedication to his craft is admirable, audiences can rest assured there's really very little woodwork in What Happens in Vegas, available now from Blockbuster. Mostly it's just pleasingly silly with a handful of grossout moments and some genuine chemistry between the leads. Turns out it was the opportunity to work with Cameron that drew Ashton to the project in the first place.
"Here's how it went down," says Kutcher, settling down to tell a Hollywood story. "When I first got the script I was totally set on not doing another comedy. But then I read like, the first 30 pages, and I laughed out loud, really hard, multiple times. Clearly there was something there.
"Later on I had a meeting with Emma Watts, a Fox executive. She asked me, 'What is it going to take to get you to do this movie?' So I said, 'Give me a great co-star'. A day later she called me to say, '
Cameron Diaz is doing the movie'. So I said ok. After that I called Cameron and we got together to talk about the movie. I was like, 'So you've agreed to do it'. But she was like, 'No, I thought you agreed to do it'. It was then we realised that Emma had totally played us, that she'd told each of us that the other had committed to making the movie, but by then we'd met and had a good conversation, and decided that working together could be a lot of fun."
Although the two had never collaborated before, or even hung out socially, Diaz and Kutcher's paths had crossed at least once in the past, back before Ashton became Mr Confidence.
"I saw her backstage at one of those awards shows about seven years ago," he remembers, "and I was like, 'Wow, she's hot!' And funny too. This was right after
There's Something About Mary came out, so I was like, 'Wow, she's hot and funny!' I was totally enamoured. So much so that I don't think I was able to make words when I talked to her. I think I just made noises and then walked away."
The way he talks about her today, Ashton still seems a little star struck. "When you're with and around Cameron," he enthuses, "it doesn't matter who else is around, she's the happiest person to be there."
Urged to elaborate, he instead recapitulates. "Like, when you step in a room with her, it doesn't matter who's in it, she is bar none the happiest person to be there."
One more time then, just for luck. "It doesn't matter what room it is. It doesn't matter who else is there. It doesn't matter what she's doing, she's the happiest person to be there." Ok. We get it. She's super-positive.
"I've never met a person who is so, like, 'We can do this!' She has the greatest depth of appreciation for anything she's asked to do in a movie, or in life. She sees that glass as so half full, it's spilling because it's actually just full. And she makes your life better just by being around her."
Quizzed about wife
Demi Moore, a stunningly preserved 45-year-old, Kutcher is noticeably more restrained, perhaps in a vain attempt to keep some small part of his life private. Of their age difference, though, he does volunteer, "My whole life, I've always been around older people. My friends were always a little bit older and when I was young, I spent a lot of time with my mum and her friends. I was always more interested in adult conversation, so maybe I have a thing. I don't know. I like grown ups, I guess."
As for being one himself, the 30-year-old insists it's not the years but the mileage. "I feel so darn grown up," he concludes, "but honestly though, the number is inconsequential. It's all about where you are in life and how much responsibility you've taken on, not how old you are. For me, turning 30 was just an excuse to throw a party and not get hepatitis."