Ashton Kutcher Recalls Feeling Like a “Failure” After Split From Demi Moore
The actor was "f***ing pissed" when his ex-wife brought up their history in her memoir.
Ashton Kutcher spent the early years of his career in the spotlight and absolutely loved it. That is until he didn’t. Since his divorce from Demi Moore, the actor has gone to exhaustive lengths to build a shield of privacy around his family with Mila Kunis, which was shattered by the release of his ex-wife’s tell-all memoir, Inside Out.
“I was f*cking pissed,” Kutcher revealed of the privacy breach in Esquire’s first digital cover story.
Mega actors in their own right, Kutcher and Kunis have remained uninvolved in each other’s projects and investments, for the most part at least. They rarely make red carpet appearances together, and they’ve vowed to never share photos of their kids, Wyatt and Dimitri, online.
Thus, when Inside Out published in 2019 it felt as though all their hard work had been smashed to smithereens. Instantly.
“I’d finally gotten to a place where the press had really laid off me and Mila, and my life and my family. And then the next day, [the paparazzi] are at my kids’ school,” he continued.
Wary of another potential media outbreak, Kutcher quipped, “I don’t want to open anything up in that realm.”
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In 2003, Kutcher and Moore began dating. Their 15-year age gap — ages 25 and 40, respectively — immediately made them the most talked about pair in Hollywood at the time. That coupled with the fact Moore was walking into the relationship with three young daughters from her previous marriage to actor Bruce Willis.
“The moment that information broke, my life changed,” Kutcher recalled.
After two years of dating, the duo wed in 2005. Kutcher became a stepdad at age 26, and went from partying to flipping flapjacks for his stepdaughters while their mom was away on location.
“I was twenty-six, bearing the responsibility of an eight-year-old, a ten-year-old, and a twelve-year-old. That’s how some teen parents must experience their twenties,” he told the outlet.
As disclosed in her memoir, Moore and Kutcher were getting ready to welcome a baby of their own; however Moore suffered from a miscarriage six months into the pregnancy.
“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, Kutcher acknowledged. “Everyone deals with that in different ways.”
Moore writes about how she and Kutcher tried to conceive for several more years after the miscarriage, and even looked into IVF. Looking back, Kutcher said he was just as excited as Moore was to welcome new life into the world, but for whatever reason it wasn’t meant to be.
“I love kids. I wouldn’t have gotten married to a woman that had three kids if I didn’t love kids. The idea of having another kid would have been incredible,” he explained, adding he’s come to terms with their journey. “For whatever reason, I had to have that experience.”
In 2013, they divorced after eight years of marriage. “Nothing makes you feel like a failure like divorce,” Kutcher said. “Divorce feels like a wholesale f*cking failure. You failed at marriage.”
Kutcher, however, did find love again. This time with his That ‘70s Show costar. He and Kunis tied the knot in 2015 and share two kids together.
