Career
Modeling
After participating in an IMTA competition (losing to
Josh
Duhamel) in 1998, Kutcher signed with Next modeling agency in New York,
appeared in commercials for Calvin Klein, and models in Paris and Milan.[18]
Acting
After his success in modeling, Kutcher moved to Los
Angeles after his first audition,[19]
was cast as Michael Kelso in the television series That
‘70s Show, from 1998 to 2006. Kutcher was cast in a series of film
roles; although he auditioned but was not cast for the role of Danny Walker in Pearl Harbor (2001) (replaced by Josh
Hartnett), he starred in several comedy films, including Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000), Just
Married (2003), and Guess Who (2005). He appeared in the 2003
family film, Cheaper By The Dozen, as a
self-obsessed actor. In the 2004 drama film The Butterfly Effect Kutcher, played a
conflicted young man who time travels. The film received mixed to negative
reviews, but was a box office success.[13]
In 2003, Kutcher produced and starred as the host in his own series, MTV’s Punk’d
that involved hidden camera tricks performed on celebrities. He is
also an executive producer of the reality television shows Beauty and the Geek, Adventures in Hollyhood (based around
the rap group Three 6 Mafia), The Real Wedding Crashers, and the
game show Opportunity Knocks. Many of his
production credits, including Punk’d, come through Katalyst
Films, a production company he runs with partner Jason
Goldberg.[20]
A 2004 interviewer described Kutcher as a “hunky young actor [who] is heading
in all different directions at once”, including “the hot L.A. restaurant Dolce”:
“If anything, I’m a trier,”
says Kutcher between puffs of filtered Lucky Strikes. “I think, more than
anything, it comes from the fact that my father always had several irons in the
fire. Also, I don’t want to fail. If something doesn’t work out—if That
‘70s Show got canceled or if I wasn’t going to have a film career—I always
wanted to have backup contingency plans. So I just started doing other things;
and on a half-hour sitcom, you’re really only working for 30 hours a week. It
allows a lot of time for sitting around, which I always kind of filled with
work.”[21]
Because of scheduling conflicts with the filming of The Guardian, Kutcher was forced not
to renew his contract for the eighth and final season of That ‘70s Show,
although he appeared in its first four episodes (credited as a special guest
star) and returned for the series finale.[13]
Kutcher produced and starred in the 2010 action comedy, Killers, in which he played a hitman.[22]
In May 2011, Kutcher was announced as Charlie
Sheen‘s replacement on the series Two and a Half Men.[23]
Kutcher’s contract was for one year and was believed to be worth nearly $20
million.[24]
His debut as the character Walden
Schmidt, entitled “Nice to Meet You, Walden Schmidt“,
was seen by 28.7 million people on September 19, 2011. The Nielsen
ratings company reported that figure was more than any episode in the show’s
first eight seasons, when Sheen starred in it.[25][26]
Kutcher earned $750,000 an episode on the show.[27]
The show ended with a forty-minute series finale “Of Course He’s Dead“ on February 19, 2015.
Venture capitalism and
investment
Beyond the entertainment
world, Kutcher is also a venture capitalist. Kutcher has also successfully
invested in several high technology startups.[28][29] Some of his investments include Skype,
Foursquare, Airbnb, Path and Fab.com.[30] He is a co-founder of the venture
capital firm A-Grade Investments.[31] On October 29, 2013, Lenovo announced that it has hired Kutcher as
product engineer.[32] Kutcher was part of the management team
for Ooma, a tech start-up launched in September 2007.
Ooma is in the Voice over
Internet Protocol business and Kutcher’s role was as Creative
Director. He spearheaded a marketing campaign and produced viral videos to promote
this service. Kutcher also created an interactive arm of Katalyst called Katalyst Media, with his partner from Katalyst
Films, Jason Goldberg. Their first site was the animated cartoon Blah Girls.
Ooma revamped its sales and marketing strategy with a new management team in
the summer of 2008, replacing Kutcher as their creative director. Rich
Buchanan, from Sling Media, became Ooma’s Chief Marketing Officer.[33]
Restaurant
Kutcher has invested in an Italian restaurant, Dolce[13]
(other owners include Danny Masterson and Wilmer
Valderrama) and a Japanese-themed restaurant named Geisha House with
locations in Atlanta,
Los
Angeles and New York City.[34]
Shark Tank
Kutcher appeared as a guest Shark during the seventh
season of Reality
TV show Shark Tank, which premiered on September 25, 2015.[35]
Other work
In 2009, Kutcher established
an international human rights organization with his then wife Demi Moore. DNA Foundation, later known as Thorn, works to address the sexual
exploitation of children and the proliferation of child pornography on a global
scale.[36]
On March 23, 2011, Kutcher launched his own Twitter client
with UberMedia called A.plus. While the app was initially available exclusively
for desktop computers with Adobe Air
installed, it eventually became available on mobile platforms, for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.
In order to download on one of the 3 mobile platforms, users must first have
the UberSocial client installed on their device and then proceed to the device’s
browser to download A.plus.[37][38]
In 2013, Kutcher teamed up with Evan Beard
and Kendall Dabaghi to launch A Plus (URL aplus.com), where Kutcher is
currently Chairman of the Board.[39]
Initially a product discovery service,[40]
it morphed in April 2014 to a social media-driven content platform focused on
upbeat stories.[41]
It was officially launched in that incarnation in January 2015.[42]
It has reported 27.5 million monthly uniques in the United States, has an Alexa
rank of about 3000 (1400 in the US), and is ranked by Quantcast as a top 50
site in the US in terms of unique visitors.[39][43]
Personal life
Relationships
In mid-2003, Kutcher began dating actress Demi Moore.
Kutcher and Moore married on September 24, 2005.[44]
On November 17, 2011, Moore announced her intention to end the marriage.[45]
After over a year of separation, Kutcher filed for divorce from Moore on
December 21, 2012, in Los Angeles Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences.[46]
The divorce was finalized on November 27, 2013.[44]
Kutcher began dating his former That ‘70s Show
co-star Mila
Kunis during the first half of 2012.[47]
After they became engaged in February 2014,[48]
she gave birth to their daughter Wyatt Isabelle Kutcher in October 2014.[49][50]
Kunis married Kutcher during the first weekend of July 2015, in Oak Glen, California.[51]
Interests and beliefs
Kutcher describes himself as fiscal conservative
and social liberal.[52] [George Clooney. Steven Soderbergh. Bill Maher. Bill Burr.] He has been a student of Kabbalah, a
form of Jewish mysticism, for several years.[53]
His No Strings Attached co-star, Natalie
Portman, stated in 2011 that Kutcher “has taught me more about Judaism than
I think I have ever learned from anyone else”.[54]
On trips to Israel, Kutcher visited Kabbalah centers in Tel Aviv and
in Tsfat.[53]
In 2013, Kutcher remarked that “Israel is near and dear to my heart..... coming
to Israel is sort of coming back to the source of creation – trying to get
closer to that. And as a creative person, going to the source of creation is
really inspiring. And this place has been really inspiring for me – not
only on a spiritual level, but also on an artistic and creative level.”[55]
On September 17, 2008, Kutcher was named the assistant coach for the freshman
football team at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles.
However, he was unable to return in 2009 because he was filming Spread.[56][57]
In February 2011, Kutcher sold his Hollywood
Hills home, which he originally bought in 2004.[58]
In April 2012, Kutcher became the 500th paying customer to sign up to ride Virgin
Galactic‘s SpaceShipTwo.[59]
Social media presence
On April 16, 2009, Kutcher became the first user of
Twitter to have more than 1,000,000 followers,[60]
beating CNN in the
site’s “Million followers contest”.[61][62]
However, there have been several reports that Twitter manipulated the contest’s
results by preventing users from “unfollowing” Kutcher or CNN.[63]
In November 2011, Kutcher received much criticism for
his tweet in response to the Jerry Sandusky child sexual
abuse scandal calling the firing of Penn State Nittany Lions football
coach Joe
Paterno in “poor taste”.[64]
Kutcher subsequently turned over management of his Twitter account to his team
at the Katalyst Media company.[65]
On March 8, 2015, Kutcher sparked a national debate
regarding the lack of equal access to diaper changing facilities in men’s
restrooms with this Facebook post: “There are NEVER diaper changing stations in
mens public restrooms.
The first public men’s room that I go into that has
one gets a free shout out on my FB page! #BeTheChange”. This post received more
than 244,000 ‘Likes’, 11,500 comments, and was reposted more than 14,000 times.
Kutcher has leveraged his social media presence,
particularly on Facebook, to post and promote content published by A Plus, a social media-driven content platform
and associated company that he is Chairman of.[39]
Controversy
In April 2011, Kutcher and then-wife Demi Moore began
a public service announcement campaign
claiming that “Real Men” do not engage the services of child prostitutes who
are the victims of human trafficking.[66]
Kutcher’s claims that 100,000 to 300,000 American children were sold into
sexual slavery were criticized by newspaper The
Village Voice, which gave evidence refuting the claims. Kutcher may
have understood a study referring to minors “at risk” for sexual exploitation
as referring to children actually being prostituted. Experts estimate the true
numbers to be in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands.[67]
Kutcher reacted to the criticism by accusing the Village Voice of
promoting child prostitution and using Twitter to request that The Village
Voice advertisers including American
Airlines, Disney,
the City of
Seattle, and Domino’s Pizza withdraw their advertising from
publications owned by the Voice’s parent company.[68][69]
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