Everyone knows that A-list love is never easy — but was Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore's relationship doomed from the start, or were they victims of their own bad luck?
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00:00 Everyone knows that A-list love is never easy. But was Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore's relationship
00:07 doomed from the start? Or were they victims of their own bad luck?
00:13 Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher were first introduced at a dinner party in 2003. But sparks didn't
00:20 exactly fly right away. In fact, Kutcher seemed more interested in another dinner guest, as
00:27 Moore later explained during an interview on Live! with Regis & Kelly. She said,
00:32 "The first night I met him, he didn't have two words to say to me. He had a singular
00:37 focus and it was on somebody else."
00:40 However, Moore eventually did get Kutcher's attention, when the two met again at a play.
00:47 Moore was wearing what she referred to in Harper's Bazaar as a dress that gets results.
00:52 Moore's Proenza Schouler cocktail dress seemed to do the trick. She added,
00:57 "It was an effective evening. It was a life-changing evening."
01:02 According to Moore, the relationship was intense in those early days. She later described feeling
01:07 an instant connection with Kutcher. She said,
01:11 "I knew it had the potential to be something special right away."
01:16 Kutcher echoed the sentiment in a 2006 interview with Parade, saying,
01:20 "I could be totally comfortable on my first date with Demi. It was just there."
01:26 He also gushed about their happy relationship, claiming they weren't a couple who fought.
01:32 Kutcher told CBS News,
01:33 "We had one argument in the first three months of dating, and since then, we haven't had
01:38 any."
01:40 One reason Moore and Kutcher's relationship so quickly grabbed the public's attention
01:44 was their 15-year age gap. When the pair began dating, Moore was 40 and Kutcher was 25.
01:50 When Kutcher hosted Saturday Night Live in 2005, the couple took the opportunity to poke
01:56 fun at themselves, with Moore dressing up as a much older woman.
02:00 "My support poles are cutting off my circulation."
02:03 "They do that."
02:04 But Moore wasn't entirely comfortable with the media's obsession over their ages, noting
02:10 that no one seemed to care that her ex-husband, Bruce Willis, had gone on to marry a woman
02:16 23 years his junior. She told ABC News,
02:19 "Gosh, I don't know. It's so silly."
02:24 In her Harper's Bazaar interview, Moore spoke about disliking the term "cougar" and joked
02:29 that she preferred to be called a "puma." She said,
02:32 "It has a sweeter quality, more elegant."
02:36 Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher would go on to weather their fair share of drama, but
02:42 the tragedy that struck early on in their relationship was arguably worse than any of
02:47 it. Moore became pregnant with the couple's child, but later miscarried at six months.
02:54 They had even picked out a name for the baby — a girl they had planned to call Chaplain
03:00 Ray.
03:01 Kutcher reflected on the loss during a 2023 interview with Esquire. He said,
03:06 "Losing a kid that you think you're going to have, and that close to thinking you're
03:10 going to have a kid, is really, really painful. Everyone deals with that in different ways."
03:17 For Moore's part, she revealed in her 2019 memoir, Inside Out, that she had been "decimated
03:22 by the experience" and felt that Kutcher had a difficult time relating to her grief. She
03:27 wrote,
03:28 "First of all, he hadn't carried this baby. And second, he was in his 20s at the time.
03:34 He wasn't remotely late to the game of fatherhood. His possibilities were not running out."
03:40 Despite enduring such a painful loss while dating, Moore and Kutcher went on to get married
03:46 in September 2005. The wedding was something of a secret, and preparations weren't fully
03:51 in place until the day before the ceremony. A source told People magazine,
03:56 "It all came together at the very last minute."
03:59 The couple wed in a small ceremony at their home in Beverly Hills. Another source said,
04:04 "It was incredibly unpretentious, representing who they really are."
04:09 Of course, the marriage meant that Kutcher had become the stepfather of Moore's children,
04:14 something he reflected on in his Esquire interview. He said,
04:18 "I was 26, bearing the responsibility of an 8-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 12-year-old.
04:25 That's how some teen parents must experience their 20s."
04:29 But he pointed out that he certainly wasn't complaining, adding,
04:32 "I wouldn't have gotten married to a woman that had three kids if I didn't love kids."
04:38 Moore and Kutcher were not shy about openly expressing their love for one another. The
04:43 couple was especially affectionate on X, then known as Twitter, which led to Time magazine
04:49 naming them its "first Twitter celeb couple."
04:53 In a 2010 essay for Harper's Bazaar, Kutcher likened declarations of love via social media
04:59 to more traditional romantic gestures. He wrote,
05:03 "In some ways, it's no different than sending flowers to the office. You are declaring your
05:08 love for everyone to see. Who doesn't like to be publicly adored?"
05:13 Moore and Kutcher seemed more than happy to give fans a glimpse into their relationship,
05:18 referring to each other by cute nicknames like "Baby Boo" and "Pillow Partner" in their
05:23 tweets.
05:24 For Valentine's Day in 2010, Moore and Kutcher began a charity together in lieu of exchanging
05:30 gifts. The pair started the DNA Foundation, which aimed to help victims of human trafficking.
05:36 At the time, Kutcher told Reuters,
05:38 "There are 350,000 trafficked people here in the United States. We're sending the girls
05:45 flowers and making them our valentines so they know that someone can love them without
05:50 asking for anything back."
05:53 The couple used social media to bring attention to the horrors of human trafficking and to
05:57 spread the word about their foundation.
05:59 "I've been on FBI raids where I've seen things that no person should ever see."
06:06 Now known as THORN, the foundation continues to operate, focusing on protecting children
06:11 from sexual abuse.
06:14 Having a miscarriage six months into her pregnancy didn't deter Moore from continuing to attempt
06:19 to start a family with Kutcher. Moore revealed in her memoir that she underwent IVF treatments,
06:25 but to no avail. The sorrow she felt took a toll on her as she began to feel increasingly
06:31 desperate.
06:32 "I really lost sight of everything that was right in front of me, which is the family
06:38 I had."
06:40 Moore also shared that her pain and singular focus on having another child put a strain
06:45 on her and Kutcher's relationship.
06:47 "It's kind of a natural thing to pull back when somebody's, you know, clinging too tight."
06:54 The situation also hurt Moore's daughters, especially Rumer Willis.
06:59 "It was like, 'Oh, well, we're not enough.'"
07:02 Things began to go awry at some point during Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's marriage,
07:07 despite Moore's attempts to be the perfect wife. In her memoir, she revealed that she,
07:13 quote, "went into contortions" to fit the mold of the woman he wanted his wife to be.
07:19 As it turned out, this included going along with Kutcher's desire to open up their relationship
07:24 sexually. Moore wrote,
07:26 "I put him first, so when he expressed his fantasy of bringing a third person into our
07:31 bed, I didn't say no. I wanted to show him how great and fun I could be."
07:37 However, these experiences were ultimately not the best for the relationship, and Moore
07:42 was left with regret. Of the people she and Kutcher invited into their relationship, she
07:47 wrote,
07:48 "They were good people, but it was still a mistake."
07:52 Although she had been a willing participant in their sexual adventures, Moore admitted
07:57 that the threesomes they engaged in caused her to feel a great deal of shame.
08:02 Moore and Kutcher's threesomes during the waning days of their relationship created
08:07 an unintended outcome. In her book, Moore wrote,
08:10 "Because we had brought in a third party into our relationship, Ashton said that blurred
08:15 the lines and to some extent justified what he's done."
08:20 This was referring to the fact that Kutcher had once cheated on Moore. In 2011, a 22-year-old
08:26 woman named Sarah Leal went public when she and Kutcher had sex following an all-night
08:32 party at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego. According to a report by Us Weekly, the incident
08:37 occurred on Moore and Kutcher's sixth wedding anniversary, although Kutcher reportedly
08:43 told Leal he and Moore were separated at the time. Moore wrote in her memoir,
08:48 "He admitted it right away."
08:51 Kutcher later spoke about the cheating allegations with Esquire, saying,
08:55 "You own the s--- you did wrong. And you go forward."
09:00 Infidelity seems to have been the final straw in Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's relationship,
09:05 as they announced their split shortly after Kutcher was accused of cheating. But even
09:10 before the divorce was finalized in 2013, the marriage had taken its toll on Moore's
09:15 health and well-being. Moore, who had been sober for decades, suddenly found herself
09:20 drinking and taking prescription pills, as well as using synthetic marijuana, which landed
09:26 her in the hospital. A source told People magazine in 2012,
09:30 "She wasn't sleeping as well, didn't seem to be eating, and looked really gaunt."
09:36 Moore opened up about the pain she'd experienced during her interview with Diane Sawyer.
09:41 "I blinded myself. And I lost myself."
09:49 She added that it wasn't only the end of her relationship with Kutcher that was devastating.
09:54 "It was really about my whole life."
09:57 Kutcher didn't leave the marriage unscathed, either. He later told Esquire,
10:01 "Nothing makes you feel like a failure like divorce. Divorce feels like a wholesale f---ing
10:07 failure. You failed at marriage."
10:11 Although Moore and Kutcher split in November 2011, Kutcher remained close with at least
10:16 one of Moore's daughters, rumored Willis. In 2012, Willis, who was pursuing a singing
10:22 career at the time, performed a show at Hollywood's Sayers Club, with Kutcher cheering her on
10:27 from the audience and snapping pics with his phone.
10:31 In 2014, Willis told Access Hollywood that she was still in touch with her ex-stepfather,
10:37 even congratulating him on the birth of his daughter with his current wife, Mila Kunis.
10:42 She also explained that she'd been reflecting on Kutcher's relationship with her mother,
10:47 which she was able to see from a new perspective. She pointed out that when Kutcher started
10:52 dating Moore, he had been younger than Willis was at the time of that interview. She added,
10:57 "That would be like me meeting someone who already had three teenage kids and kind of
11:02 going into that whole situation was crazy."
11:04 In 2019, after coming to a place where she had reclaimed her sobriety and wellness, Demi
11:11 Moore released her memoir, Inside Out. The book revealed plenty of bombshells about her
11:17 life and relationship with Ashton Kutcher. Ahead of the book's publication, Moore told
11:23 the New York Times,
11:24 "It's exciting, and yet I feel very vulnerable. There is no cover of a character. It's not
11:30 somebody else's interpretation of me."
11:32 While Moore was empowered by telling her story, Kutcher was less than thrilled about certain
11:37 details of his personal life becoming public. He shared his dismay with Esquire, explaining,
11:43 "I was f---ing pissed. I'd finally gotten to a place where the press had really laid
11:49 off me and Mila, and my life and my family. And then the next day, the paparazzi are at
11:54 my kids' school."
11:56 But he acknowledged that overall, life was good, and said that he was unwilling to linger
12:01 in the negativity of his past. He said,
12:04 "I don't want to open anything up in that realm."
12:08 "I had no idea that we went to the same high school. We have a lot in common."
12:13 In 2022, it seemed tensions had finally died down between Moore and Kutcher, as Moore and
12:20 Kutcher's current wife Mila Kunis starred in a commercial together. Kunis and Kutcher,
12:26 who met while starring on That '70s Show, married in 2015 and share two children.
12:32 The ad for AT&T aired during the Super Bowl. It features two women at a high school reunion
12:37 who approach the stage at the same time as the school's "Most Admired Alum" award is
12:43 about to be presented. It turns out to be neither of them, so they share some awkward
12:49 banter.
12:50 It turns out, Moore and Kunis really did attend the same high school, too — Fairfax High
12:55 School in Los Angeles. And it was Kunis who reached out to Moore with ideas for the commercial.
13:01 Moore told Entertainment Tonight,
13:03 "Who knew being a Fairfax alum would have brought this unexpected opportunity to come
13:08 together with Mila in such a fun and playful way?"
13:12 �
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