He didn't wear a black turtleneck wire-rim glasses, but Ashton Kutcher successfully promoted his new movie about Steve Jobs by channeling the man himself at Sunday's Teen Choice Awards. As he accepted the Ultimate Choice Award (which he dubbed the "Old Guy Award"), the actor-slash-tech investor delivered an acceptance speech that veered into motivational territory.
"I feel like a fraud," Kutcher, 35, told the crowd. "My name's not even Ashton. Ashton is my middle name.
My first name's Chris. It got changed when I was 19 and I became an actor. But there are some really amazing things I learned when I was Chris, and I wanted to share those things with you guys, because I think it's helped me be here today. ... The first thing is about opportunity, the second thing is about being sexy and the third thing is about living life.
The highest-paid sitcom star on TV believes that "opportunity looks a lot like hard work," and he listed some of the jobs he had before hitting it big, from washing dishes to carrying shingles (that gig earned a lingering scream from an excited female audience member) sweeping Cheerios dust from a factory floor.
"I never had a job in my life that I was better than," he intoned. "I was always just lucky to have a job. And every job I had was a stepping stone to my next job, and I never quit my job until I had my next job, and so opportunities look a lot like work."
As for being sexy, the guy who allegedly stepped out on Demi Moore with a nubile blonde offered the following advice:
"The sexiest thing in the entire world is bein' really smart, and being thoughtful and being generous," he said.
"Everything else is crap, I promise you. It's just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less.
So don't buy it. Be smart, be thoughtful and be generous."
Kutcher then proved his third point by slipping in a plug for his movie: "The third thing is something that I just relearned when I was makin' this movie about Steve Jobs," he explained. "And Steve Jobs said, 'When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way that it is.'"
But, Ashton emoted, "Everything around us that we call life was made up by people that are no smarter than you. And you can build your own things and you can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life. Don't live one, build one. Find your opportunities and always be sexy."
Watch his entire speech here.
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