What Really Happened To Ashton Kutcher?
There was a time when Ashton Kutcher was the ultimate It-boy. After starring in "That '70s Show" from 1998 until 2006, he starred in a series of rom-coms, including "Just Married," "What Happens in Vegas," and "No Strings Attached," which made him one of the biggest millennial heartthrobs in Hollywood. In 2011, he was cast alongside Jon Cryer in "Two and Half Men," replacing Charlie Sheen in the CBS sitcom.
Even though Kutcher's career seemed to be going from strength to strength, when "Two and a Half Men" came to an end in 2015, his career suddenly began to slow down. In fact, as of 2024, Kutcher has only appeared in a small number of acting projects since the sitcom. Kutcher hasn't spoken too much about his acting career's decline — however, in 2023, he revealed to Esquire that he had been quietly quitting Hollywood for a few years. As he told the magazine, he had contemplated whether he was officially "done" with acting. However, he decided that he didn't need to make any kind of announcement. "You don't have to tell anyone!" he said, adding, "Enough already."
So, what has he been up to instead? Well, Kutcher has been busy with his family, his investments, his philanthropy, and an autoimmune disease — and, in 2023, he took on two major acting roles. Curious to learn more? Here's what really happened to Ashton Kutcher.
Ashton Kutcher had an awful reputation after his relationship with Demi Moore
Ashton Kutcher's first marriage to Demi Moore came to an end in 2013 after nearly a decade of marriage. The separation came after reports that Kutcher had cheated on Moore. She later claimed in her memoir, "Inside Out," that Kutcher had encouraged her to open up the relationship and have threesomes with someone with whom he allegedly had an affair.
As Esquire later reported, the tumultuous separation and the tabloid reports of his infidelity left him with a severely damaged reputation. He even heard his colleagues saying things like, "Can you believe what he f***ing did?" at industry events.
To make matters worse, the negative publicity only reminded Kutcher of one of his darkest times. As a teen, he had broken into his old high school and been arrested. Kutcher eventually moved past this low point in his life, but it took "tons" of work. "You own the s*** you did wrong, and you go forward," he said.
Ashton Kutcher starred in The Ranch
Ashton Kutcher didn't entirely stop acting after "Two and a Half Men." In fact, from 2016 until 2020, he starred in "The Ranch," a Netflix show about an ex-athlete who returns to his family's small town ranch. The show also starred Sam Elliot and Danny Masterson. Masterson was written out of the show in 2018 after he was charged with three counts of rape.
When the show was canceled after four years on the air, Kutcher supported Netflix's decision and didn't seem too eager to keep it going. "The story was told," he said on an episode of "WTF With Marc Maron." "I love everything that we did. Everybody there was still highly in love with each other. ... We got to the point where we were able to let everybody know that this was the last season and that we were going to wrap it up so everybody had time to find their next gig."
He took on a few other film and TV roles
After "The Ranch," Ashton Kutcher's acting career continued to plod along pretty slowly with just a few sporadic roles. In 2021, he starred in "The Long Home," a Tennessee-set indie period drama film that also starred James Franco, Josh Hutcherson, and Josh Hartnett — however, the film was shelved by the production company apparently in the wake of accusations of sexual misconduct against Franco — one of which actually involved a cast member from the film.
In 2022, he appeared in the B.J. Novak film "Vengeance." As Novak told Variety, the film gave Kutcher the chance to show a different side of him. "People love Ashton, but they don't necessarily know this genius side of Ashton," he said. "This is one of the great tech investors of the past 10 years. People know him as this charming leading man but not this intellectual powerhouse."
Ashton Kutcher started a family with Mila Kunis
Although Ashton Kutcher's career may have slowed down, his personal life has only gotten busier and busier. In 2012, Ashton Kutcher began dating his former "That '70s Show" co-star, Mila Kunis. The pair got engaged in 2014, had their first child a few months later, and the following year, they tied the knot. They had their second child in 2016. "The thing about Mila that made our relationship accelerate was that I had always admired her," Kutcher later told Esquire. "Her talents, her skills, her gifts. But I knew that she didn't need me. And she knew that I didn't need her."
For Kutcher, spending time with his wife and children is better than any acting role. "The dream role is the role I play as a father and a husband," he said to E! News in 2023. "My life is so good. I love my family so much. I love spending time with my kids. I love my wife so much." It's no wonder his acting roles have been few and far between ever since he and Kunis began their family.
He got into investing
Although Ashton Kutcher doesn't act frequently these days, he keeps himself very busy with investing. "I started off just investing as an independent person," he explained to Vox in 2016. "I was running a production company and I saw buffering speeds start to pick up online. And realized there was going to be a migration of content delivery into that space."
Over the years, Kutcher made some investments that have proved extremely lucrative — he invested in companies like Square, Foursquare, Optimizely, GroupMe, Skype, Airbnb, Uber, and Houzz. All of these companies did really, really well. "I started to do relatively well and kind of doubled down on it," he said. Kutcher eventually began a fund with his partner Guy Oseary. By 2016, they had invested $30 million and raised $130 million. Eventually, Kutcher's success as an investor meant that he simply didn't need to act anymore. As he put it to Esquire, "That's not part of my equation anymore."
Ashton Kutcher has a complex relationship with his twin brother
Fans may not know it, but Ashton Kutcher is actually a twin. He rarely talks about his brother, Michael, in interviews because the pair have had a pretty fraught relationship over the years. However, in 2022, Ashton and Michael brother began to mend their relationship. They described the process on an episode of "The Checkup With Dr. David Agus" (via CTV News).
Michael has cerebral palsy and had several medical emergencies as a child. At the time, he and Ashton were very close, and Ashton often felt guilty about his own good health. As Ashton's fame grew, Michael began to feel jealous. "There was a moment when I viewed him as receiving more attention than I was," Michael said on the show. "That kind of drove me down to a place where I was jealous." However, over the years, the pair have rekindled their bond. "[O]nce I took all of the fame and everything out of it, I was able to just, you know, come back to him," Michael said.
His web series was fined $1 million
In 2021, Ashton Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis released an animated web series called "Stoner Cats." The series also featured the voices of Dax Shepard, Jane Fonda, Michael Bublé, and others. "[W]e were doing this during quarantine during quarantine, during COVID ... I was like how do we stand out, how do we do something different?" Kunis recalled to CoinDesk. She and Kutcher decided to turn the show into an NFT.
However, in 2023, the series was fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for misleading investors during the funding process. According to an SEC press release, the series was financed by unregistered crypto sales. Kutcher and Kunis were fined for "conducting an unregistered offering of crypto asset securities in the form of purported non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that raised approximately $8 million from investors to finance an animated web series called 'Stoner Cats.'" The fine was used to repay buyers of the NFTs.
Ashton Kutcher was a witness in a murder trial
In 2019, Ashton Kutcher made headlines for a very different reason — he was called to speak at the trial of Michael Thomas Gargiulo, also known as "The Hollywood Ripper" and "The Boy Next Door Killer." Gargiulo had been accused of murdering two women in 2001 and 2005. One the victims had been Ashley Ellerin, who had arranged to go on a date with Kutcher the same day that she was killed. Kutcher had arrived at her home to pick her up for the date to find the door locked but the lights on. "I didn't really think anything of it," Kutcher said during the trial, adding that he "figured [he had] screwed up" (via The Guardian). He apparently even peeked through the door and saw blood stains, which he mistook for a wine spill.
The next morning, Ellerin's body was discovered. Kutcher described how he had been "freaking out" after he found out what had happened. After the trial, Gargiulo was found guilty and given the death sentence.
He ran a marathon
In 2022, Ashton Kutcher ran his very first marathon. His goal had been to raise money for his foundation, Thorn. As Kutcher told "Today," he trained, very, very hard for the marathon. "It's brutal on the body," he said. A big part of his training involved virtual Peloton sessions, in which he interviewed the likes of Natalie Portman and Kim Kardashian while running. "Here's the thing, it was so much training... I was like, 'I'm getting bored running.'" He added, "What if I do this thing where I'm interviewing friends?"
During the marathon, Kutcher struggled to make it through the race. As he recalled to Esquire, about 10 miles into the race, he experienced a sharp pain in his side. He was then inspired to speak to God. "If you need me to have this side stitch to finish this race, then give me every ounce of pain you could possibly give me," he said, adding, "If you don't need me to have it, take it away." Apparently, he passed some gas and the stitch disappeared — Kutcher finished the race.
After completing the marathon, Kutcher decided to introduce his children to running. "They want to run a 5K, and today he started training our kids to run," Kunis told People. "They did a half-mile run today. It's very cute."
Ashton Kutcher was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease
In 2019, Ashton Kutcher had a major health scare. One day, he woke up and found that his vision and hearing were almost completely gone. "[It] ... threw off my equilibrium and my balance and I couldn't walk," he said in an episode of the Paramount+ docuseries "The Checkup With Dr. David Agus" (via CBS News). "I had vasculitis." Kutcher explained how losing all things he had always taken for granted was a transformative experience. "You want to reclaim the health that you once had," he said.
Vasculitis is a rare autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation in the blood vessels. As Kutcher told Esquire, the recovery process involved rehab and a lot of determination. It was slow and painful and full of failure and frustration. He tried and tried to get himself back to normal. "I'd just try to do it until I could f***ing do it," he recalled.
Although Kutcher hadn't planned on going public about his diagnosis, the news came out during his episode of "Running Wild With Bear Grylls." "At the end of the day," he told Esquire, "I have to look at it and be like, 'All right, well, maybe it needed to come out.'"
He does a lot of philanthropic work
Over the years, Ashton Kutcher has dedicated a lot of his time to giving. In fact, he has made generosity a key part of his life. As he told Interview Magazine in 2022, "The happiest moments in our lives are when we're giving. The only lasting happiness and fulfillment that I've ever had in my life is when I truly gave something away."
In 2009, Kutcher founded Thorn (formerly DNA) with his then-wife, Demi Moore. The organization was designed to support children who were victims of sex trafficking. After 15 years, Kutcher stepped down from the board after he faced backlash for writing a letter that supported his longtime friend, convicted rapist Danny Masterson. "After my wife and I spent several days of listening, personal reflection, learning, and conversations with survivors and the employees and leadership at Thorn, I have determined the responsible thing for me to do is resign as Chairman of the Board, effectively immediately," Kutcher wrote in a statement in September 2023. "I cannot allow my error in judgment to distract from our efforts and the children we serve."
In 2022, Kutcher and Kunis also orchestrated a fundraiser to support refugees of the war in Ukraine, ultimately raising over $30 million.
Ashton Kutcher reprised his That '70s Show role
Even though Ashton Kutcher had thought his acting career was slowing down, in 2023, he came back to the small screen, reprising his famous role from "That '70s Show" in its sequel, "That '90s Show." As he told Esquire, his wife and former co-star, Mila Kunis, convinced him to accept the role. "[She] goes, 'You know, we owe our entire careers to this show. It doesn't matter what the script is, we're doing it,'" he recalled to Esquire.
Returning to play Michael Kelso almost 20 years later was certainly a strange experience. "It's funny and it's weird," he told Entertainment Tonight after filming Kelso's return. "[It was] super nostalgic and really odd, like, going back into the basement ... it was just bizarre," he said.
In their cameo, their now-married characters had a son, Jay, who was dating Red's granddaughter. It was also revealed that Jackie and Kelso were getting remarried for the third time. Based on the ear-piercing screams of the studio audience, it's clear that fans were absolutely thrilled to see them reprise their roles.
In 2023, he starred in Your Place or Mine
Ashton Kutcher also landed his first leading role in years in 2023 with "Your Place or Mine," a Netflix rom-com in which he played opposite Reese Witherspoon as best friends who swap homes. For Kutcher, the film was, as he told Esquire, an opportunity to do "something fun." For one thing, it starred Witherspoon. "I had always wanted to make a romantic comedy with Reese," Kutcher explained to Variety. "Like, always." Plus, it was also written and directed by his friend, Aline Brosch McKenna. "I've known Ashton a really long time," Brosh McKenna said of her casting choice, adding that he was already an icon of the screen — "Ashton played Steve Jobs," she said.
Kutcher was also drawn to the film's portrayal of the modern long-distance relationship. "This one was pretty special because I think this movie could only be made today," he said to The Hollywood Reporter. "You couldn't make this movie 15 years ago."
To prepare for the film, Kutcher and Witherspoon spoke every single day to build up their chemistry. And as far as Brosch McKenna was concerned, all of that preparation worked. "[T]hey have such great chemistry," she gushed. Here's hoping Kutcher enjoyed the experience so much that he signs up for another rom-com before too long.