Ashton Kutcher for real this time

Say we go by what we read alone on Ashton Kutcher. Isn’t he someone who would strike us as an inveterate practical joker whose show Punk’d on MTV played out pranks to some of Hollywood’s biggest names?

That is somewhat true.

For someone who grew up in a small town in Iowa where the population is just over a hundred, the reputation he has acquired seems to be the least on the actor’s mind.

It is because the real Ashton Kutcher is a complete opposite of the dumb and mischievous "Kelso" character he portrayed for seven seasons on the hit Fox sitcom That ’70s Show. He tells Details Magazine in its September issue that the reason why he launched his Punk’d show was to have a career fallback in case he gets axed from the sitcom.

These days the actor is riding high on a film career that has seen him starring in a variety of No. 1 movies that include Guess Who with famed comedian Bernie Mac, the Sundance cult hit The Butterfly Effect and of course, the film that launched his career, Dude, Where’s My Car?

"I read something yesterday that said, ‘it’s not what you achieve but what you overcome,’ and I think there’s a value in having obstacles put in our way and I think there’s a value in reaching for the next rung in the ladder," Kutcher says. "and my desire is to always reach for that next rung – the next role, and I want the next one to be the best work that I’ve ever done. You learn from every experience and you always want to do better and that’s what I do."

The 6’3" star was in Los Angeles two weeks ago to promote his movie, Touchstone Pictures’ The Guardian, a riveting dramatic tale of heroism and sacrifice which he shares top billing with Kevin Costner.

In the movie he plays a cocky swimming champ turned Coast Guard trainee, Jake Fischer, who butts head with his mentor Ben Randall (Costner), whose own tragic past seems to influence his unconventional training methods thus getting in the way of his effectively establishing rapport with his students.

This is the first movie where the actor’s will see him all buffed up.

"I trained for eight months before filming started," he reveals. "We got to boot camp and they find your weakness – that’s what they do."

"I was a little shocked when I read the script that I hadn’t really heard about what these guys do. I read it, well, before ‘Katrina’ (the devastating hurricane that sidelined production of this movie for several weeks) and I was like, ‘How do we not know about these people?,’" Kutcher confides. "It was a gift to us to actually meet these individuals and spend time with them and find out how special they are as a people."

Kutcher grew up in tiny Homestead, Iowa. When he was 13, his parents divorced around the same time he almost lost his twin brother Michael to a rare heart disease called cardiomyopathy.

"I saw some stuff I probably shouldn’t have seen," he tells USA Weekend in its April 2005 issue. "I didn’t want to be involved and I didn’t want to have to take a side. I also didn’t want to come home and find more bad news about my brother. I kept myself so busy that I didn’t allow myself to feel."

Over the next several years, young Ashton would find himself working at a General Mills factory sweeping up Cheerios dust while supporting himself through high school and college.

He was into his second year at University of Iowa studying to become a Biochemical Engineer when a talent scout spotted him and offered him a chance to model and eventually become a star.

"Growing up, we didn’t have very much money and so we couldn’t even go to the movies that often but there’ll be like old movies on TV. I remember watching Goonies when I was a kid and feeling like I could go on an adventure. I really believed I was there and that’s special and it gives somebody that maybe can’t afford to go to all these places in the world to go there," he recalls.

On his first day in LA, he landed his first audition and won the part of Kelso staying on the show for seven seasons before finally deciding to concentrate on his film career and budding film production Katalyst Films.

He did all these but not after he has done what he promised his buddy when he was 17.

"I was in a basement in Iowa, hanging out with my buddies, I was about 17 or 18 and I bet my buddy a thousand bucks that someday I would go on a date with Jennifer Aniston," he says. "Later I asked her – and she was married to Brad Pitt at the time, so I asked him permission to ask her and he said, ‘Yeah. Cool. I’ll film it.’ And I was like, ‘Great’. So we had a date setup to go to Pizza Hut and when it came time to pull it off she didn’t like to go because she thought I was joking," he laughs.

"It’s not about the thousand bucks. It’s about saying that you want to do something and doing it."

He also got married to Demi Moore last year and calls her and Bruce Willis’ daughters "my girls."

In the same interview with Details Magazine, he was asked about the matching outfits he and Moore wore at the Sundance Festival and he said: "I’ll go, ‘So, you’re wearing brown?’ Then I know I’ve got to either go for a brown or khaki suit. You could go navy, too. If she’s wearing black, you just wear black. Matching is not her job. It’s yours. You’re the purse."

The actor, who appears briefly with Moore in Emilio Estevez’s all-star Bobby Kennedy Biopic due this fall called Bobby, acknowledges that the amount of publicity he and his wife generates makes it impossible for them to do a full-length movie together.

"I’d love to work with her as an actress but the problem is, there is so much publicity in the press that happens now in a very uncomfortable way about relationships that people have in their real lives and it’s become something people are more fascinated with than the movies that we do," he says. "I think it’s a little backward sometimes. The problem with doing it is I don’t know if people could relinquish the grasp they have on our personal relationships long enough to accept us as the characters we are playing. So until the press and the media decide to change what they choose to expose about people’s lives, I don’t think I can do that."

The Guardian opens today.