Life Lessons from Ashton Kutcher

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, we revisit our April 2005 cover story featuring Ashton Kutcher—former himbo-turned-investor-turned philanthropist. For his mid-aughts cover story, the actor—shot while playing with a donut by Ellen von Unwerth—gets schooled by dreamy leading man Brad Pitt. More than 15 years later, the actor and his wife Mila Kunis continue making headlines—first, for their controversial hygiene practices, and lately, for raising funds to support Ukraine. This week, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a heartfelt thank you to the couple for their efforts. In his Interview feature, Kutcher talks to Pitt about government surveillance, an actor’s responsibility to the public, and punking his dad. So sit back, grab a pen—you just might learn a thing or two. 

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“I decided to start pulling practical jokes on my friends, and then, of course, the network really liked the fact that some of my friends were celebrities, which makes it a lot trickier. It would be a lot easier if I could just go punk my dad.”

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“I try to keep in mind, like…The government has satellites in the sky that are taking pictures of you all the time. You go to Vegas, you’re in a casino, there’s cameras going off all the time.”

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“I just try to live with the idea that l don’t have any skeletons in the closet, and that I don’t have anything I’m hiding. The glare kind of forces you to be a good, moral human being when you may not have been one before.”

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“I’ve found thus far that the things that really make me feel good are the pieces of work I do that give somebody some enlightenment, whether it’s through laughing or whatever.”

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“I think the more people that watch you, the more you become responsible for setting the bar.”

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“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.”

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“For me, the ultimate goal in what we’re doing is trying to create positive environment that makes people look at the world in a different way.”

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“It was important to me to encourage the kids there that it really is not about something that happened many thousands of years ago, that it’s really about something that’s happening now.”

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“We’re the second-best-looking people from every city across America. The best-looking ones always stay home because they’ve got it good there. And we’re a bunch of people who all felt like outcasts wherever we were from, and then we come here to be even bigger outcasts.”

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“The ultimate punk’d for me was when Bush got elected.”

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