Method actors are known to go to extreme lengths to understand the character they’re portraying. Natalie Portman dropped a whopping 20 lbs to play a ballerina in Black Swan.
Ashton Kutcher’s preparation for playing Steve Jobs in the biopic jOBS was so extreme it left him in the hospital. According to USA Today, he spent two days in the hospital after trying to stick to Steve Jobs’ fruitarian diet, which consists of eating fruits, nuts and seeds.
“I went to the hospital like two days before we started shooting the movie,” said Kutcher. “I was like doubled over in pain. My pancreas levels were completely out of whack. It was really terrifying … considering everything.”
“Considering everything” may be a reference to the cause of Jobs’ death, pancreatic cancer, in 2011. Jobs was known to maintain a fruitarian diet, which Kutcher worked into his preparation for the role, as well as studying hours of footage to replicate Jobs’ hunched walk and gestures.
But Kutcher feels he has a lot in common with the late Apple co-founder that stretches past a love for technology.
“He’s a guy that failed and got back on the horse,” said Kutcher. “I think we can all sort of relate to that in some place in our life where we are moving forward with something and we fall down. You have to have the guts to get back up and go again. I think I share that as well.”
Steve Wozniak, the other co-founder of Apple, mentioned that the first released clip of the movie isn’t as true to reality as he had hoped. He even noted that Josh Gad’s portrayal of Woz was more realistic than Kutcher’s Jobs. But perhaps Ashton’s incessant preparation has paid off in other, yet-unseen portions of the film.
jOBS premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday night, and is expected to hit theaters in April.
[Image credit: AP]
Steve Jobs was the co-founder and CEO of Apple and formerly Pixar. Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California to Joanne Simpson and a Syrian father. Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, California then adopted him. In 1972, Jobs graduated from Homestead High School in Cupertino, California and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon. One semester later, he had dropped out, later taking up the study of philosophy and foreign cultures. Steve Jobs had a deep-seated interest in...
Ashton Kutcher is an actor, tech investor and producer. In 2011, Kutcher created a venture fund, A- Grade Investments, with Ron Burkle and Guy Oseary. A-Grade has invested in multiple tech companies including Spotify, Airbnb, Foursquare, Fab, Uber, Dwolla and Path. Kutcher is also co-founder of Katalyst, a media company creating original content for digital media, television and film. In 2010, Kutcher was named one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People. In that same year, his company, Katalyst,...
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