Image Source: Getty / Tommaso Boddi
Ashton Kutcher opened up about his personal life in a rare interview amid his return to the big screen. In a digital cover story for Esquire published on Jan. 31, the “That ’70s Show” actor reflected on his past relationship with Demi Moore, speaking candidly about her pregnancy loss and becoming a stepdad to her kids at 26 years old.
“Losing a kid that you think you’re going to have, and that close to thinking you’re going to have a kid, is really, really painful.”
Ahead of the release of her memoir “Inside Out” in 2019, Moore spoke with The New York Times about losing her daughter with Kutcher about six months into her pregnancy. During the interview, she shared that she blamed herself for the loss, due to alcohol dependence. She further revealed the couple underwent fertility treatments afterward, hoping to conceive again, which ultimately did not happen.
“Losing a kid that you think you’re going to have, and that close to thinking you’re going to have a kid, is really, really painful,” said Kutcher, who now shares two children with wife Mila Kunis. “Everyone deals with that in different ways.” He also admitted that while “having another kid [with Moore] would have been incredible,” he accepts what happened. “For whatever reason, I had to have that experience,” he said.
When Kutcher and Moore got married in 2005, he became a father figure to Moore’s children with Bruce Willis: Tallulah, Rumer, and Scout. In his chat with Esquire, he shared that he would often stay home with the children while his then-wife was filming on location. “I was twenty-six, bearing the responsibility of an eight-year-old, a ten-year-old, and a twelve-year-old,” he said. “That’s how some teen parents must experience their twenties.” Though Kutcher acknowledged it was “a lot” at the time, over 12 years since their split, he still has relationships with each of Moore’s kids. “They were awesome then and they’re awesome now.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Kutcher spoke about his 2019 diagnosis of vasculitis, a rare autoimmune disorder. What started out as an untreatable migraine turned into vertigo and ended up with him in a hospital bed for a full week. After almost a year of recovery, mostly during the pandemic, he’s now focused on a quieter life with Kunis and their kids, his investment fund, and the occasional return to TV and film, including “Your Place or Mine,” his new movie with Reese Witherspoon.