Ashton Kutcher is another actor who has made the news recently for risking his health for a film role (ie: Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables and Matthew McConaughey for The Dallas Buyers Club.) In order to play Apple genius Steve Jobs, Kutcher adopted Jobs’ fruitarian diet.
“It can lead to some serious issues,” Kutcher said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I ended up in the hospital two days before we started shooting the movie. I was like doubled over in pain, and my pancreas levels were completely out of whack, which was completely terrifying, considering everything.”
Kutcher is, of course, referring to Jobs dying of pancreatic cancer in 2011. The actor, known for his role on That 70s Show, took preparations for his role in jOBS particularly seriously. Kutcher watched “hundreds of hours of footage” of Jobs giving speeches and interviews to make his portrayal more accurate. “It was kind of like throwing myself into this gauntlet of, I know, massive amounts of criticism because somebody’s going to go ‘well, it wasn’t exactly…’” Kutcher admitted.
The 34-year-old also is involved in the world of digital entrepreneurship, so he enjoyed playing someone so involved in such monumental technological advancements as the iPod and Mac computers. “What was nice was when I was preparing for the character, I could still work on product development for technology companies, and I would sort of stay in character, in the mode of the character,” Kutcher said. “But I didn’t feel like I was compromising the work on the film by working on technology stuff because it was pretty much in the same field.”
Kutcher considers Jobs a “personal hero,” noting “he’s a guy who failed and got back on the horse. I think we can all sort of relate to that at some point in life.”
jOBS recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, but won’t hit theaters everywhere until April 19.
