It's refreshing to find that an actor who has you in stitches on screen is equally entertaining in person. And Ashton Kutcher is certainly good company.
The 30-year-old Dude, Where's My Car? star is back on fine comedy form in What Happens In Vegas alongside the ever-bubbly Cameron Diaz, and in jovial mood when we meet.
"I had wanted to work with Cameron before, she just wouldn't work with me," he
says, joking. "I don't know if she will again!"
Dressed in a white shirt and tie, with a navy cricket jumper, the handsome actor remembers the slightly awkward first time he met his co-star.
"I saw her backstage at one of those award shows, like seven years ago, and I was like, 'Woah, she's hot!'
"She's funny, too. I was really enamoured, so much so that I don't think I was able to say any words when I talked to her. I think I just made noises and then walked away."
In a twist on the American adage, 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas', Kutcher and Cameron play a mismatched pair who have to face the consequences of a drunken night out in Sin City when they return home to New York.
Somehow, while heavily under the influence, they get married and then win $3 million on a slot machine.
A court case ensues as they try to legally split with a share of the spoils, until the judge orders them to do six months 'hard marriage'.
"I read the script and for the first 30 or 40 pages I was laughing out loud really hard, over and over. When that happens you have to stop and say, 'Hang on, something's working here'," he continues.
"I was talking to Emma Watts at Fox and she said, 'What's it going to take to get you to do this movie?' and I said, 'Give me a great director and a great co-star and we'll work out the rest'.
"She called me back about a day later and said 'Cameron Diaz is doing the movie' and I said, 'Okay'. Doing this movie really changed my whole perspective on making movies, because I had FUN every single day. It was a blessing," he adds.
It seems Diaz, who is not promoting the film with Kutcher because of the recent death of her father, was a big contributing factor to his enjoyment on set.
"When you're with Cameron, it doesn't matter who's there, she's just the happiest person," he says. "I've never met a person who's so up for everything. She sees that glass so half full it might be spilling out the top. And being around her just makes your life better. She's one of those people."
Filming was split between venues like Pure nightclub in Las Vegas, where Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and co party,- and several locations around New York.
Kutcher plays Jack, a bit of a ladies man, who gets fired by his boss dad from a carpentry firm, while Diaz is the slightly more uptight Joy, who has just been dumped by her fiance and has a tough job on the stock exchange.
"Romantically, they've both been looking for the wrong thing, which is probably what draws them to each other to begin with – even if they are really, really hammered at the time," says Kutcher So how much did he identify with Jack? What's the worst thing he's ever done while drunk?
"I don't know, there's a really big long list of stupid things. But probably the stupidest was when I was at my college campus. Between the house that I lived in and where all the bars were, there was a river. It was winter, the river had just frozen over and there were no tracks on it yet.
"My buddy dared me to walk across the river and I got about halfway but I was so drunk that I slipped and fell down and just passed out.
"He didn't come and save me because he didn't know how thick the ice was, so I ended up just sleeping there for a couple of hours and waking up.
"Then I went for him saying, 'Dude. Why didn't you come get me?' so he said, 'I thought the ice would break with two of us on there'. Thinking back now, it was not bright."
He's not as much of a party animal as his character Jack these days. But being happily married to actress Demi Moore, Kutcher says, was actually important to his portrayal of the character.
The full article contains 775 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
