Ashton Kutcher is praising his ex-wife Demi Moore 15 years after they separated.
While promoting his new FX series “The Beauty,” the actor was asked about the project being compared to Moore’s critically acclaimed 2024 film “The Substance.”
“I mean, one thing is Demi’s performance in Substance. Obviously she got extraordinary praise. I’m so proud of her. She did it,” Kutcher told Entertainment Tonight.
“But I think the larger context is that we are in a society where beauty enhancement is becoming increasingly dominant and accepted,” he continued. “This is strange. It’s like we’ve just been watching things like that happen for the past 20 years.”
In Ryan Murphy’s The Beauty, Kutcher plays a drug developer who creates a drug that makes people stunningly beautiful, but with deadly side effects.
In “The Substance,” Moore plays an aging celebrity who uses black market drugs that create a younger version of himself with unexpected side effects.
Moore won a Golden Globe Award, a Broadcast Film Critics Circle Award, and a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award for her performance in the film.
Kutcher, 47, and Moore, 63, began dating in 2003 and married in September 2005. After six years of marriage, they separated in 2011, and their divorce was finalized in 2013.
Ten years later, Kutcher admitted he was “fucking mad” at Moore over her 2019 memoir, Inside Head. In her book, Moore said she regretted two threesomes with the actor and accused him of influencing her to break her nearly 20-year sobriety.
“I finally got to a situation where the media was dismissing me and[wife]Mila[Kunis]and my life and my family,” Kutcher told Esquire.
“And the next day,[paparazzi]are at my kids’ school,” he continued, referring to his daughter Wyatt, now 11, and son Dimitri, now 9.
Kutcher and Moore’s romance attracted a lot of attention due to their 15-year age difference. The actor also became a stepfather to Moore’s three children with ex-husband Bruce Willis: Rumer, 37, Scout, 34, and Talulah, 31.
In 2023, Talulah candidly shared that her mother went through a rough time when she started dating a “That 70’s Show” alum.
“It was around 2003,[and]my mom had just started dating Ashton,” she recalled of her time on the reality competition series “Stars on Mars.”
“A lot of things happened in that moment and I really went inside myself,” she continued. “That caused me to get into a dumpster fire. It was really tough. I’m still unpacking.”
