After spending several years largely away from the spotlight, Ashton Kutcher says returning to acting was not something he had planned until a call from Ryan Murphy changed his mind.
Kutcher’s last on-screen appearance came in the Netflix romantic comedy Your Place or Mine, opposite Reese Witherspoon. Even after that, he admits he was in no rush to take on new projects.
“Honestly, I have young kids and I’m very involved in their lives, coaching flag football and doing all these things. And I have a venture capital firm that I run,” Kutcher told The Hollywood Reporter. “I was like, ‘I’m not!’ I was like, ‘I’m not interested in doing anything right now.’”
The turning point came when Murphy, who co-created The Beauty with Matt Hodgson, approached him with an idea that immediately caught his attention.
“I mean, he’s one of the greatest writers on the planet, and you go, ‘All right, let me have a conversation,’” Kutcher recalled.
During their meeting, Murphy laid out the philosophical foundation of the series, drawing connections to modern beauty culture, cosmetic procedures and weight-loss drugs.
“I sat with him and he told me what this was about, and we had a deep conversation about GLP-1s and what’s happening with Ozempic and Mounjaro and cosmetic surgery — and all the lengths that people are going to in order to become what they define as the most beautiful version of themselves.”
Murphy framed the story around a provocative idea that stayed with Kutcher. “What if there was a shot that just made you that? What would you be willing to pay for it?” he asked.
The actor says Murphy had already envisioned him in the central role. “You are this character and I want you to play it,” Kutcher recalls being told.
In The Beauty, Kutcher plays a character known as The Corporation, a trillionaire who lives in extreme luxury and controls the distribution of a powerful drug that promises eternal youth and physical perfection. Introduced on a yacht in Croatia, the character embodies wealth, ambition and moral compromise.
The drug, called “The Beauty,” delivers remarkable results—but at a devastating cost. That corruption is mirrored in The Corporation’s personal life, particularly in his strained marriage to Franny Forst, played by Isabella Rossellini. In the trailer, she tells him: “Every night I pray for your death.”
The role represents a sharp departure from Kutcher’s familiar comedic image, built through projects such as That ’70s Show, Dude, Where’s My Car?, Two and a Half Men and Just Married. He says stepping into darker territory was both intimidating and energising.
“It’s a fun challenge to try to justify what appear to be absolutely unjustifiable decisions, right?” he said. “That becomes this mental gymnastics that you have to play — to not judge your character and just go out as if, ‘No, this is the way things have to happen.’”
Online speculation has linked the character to real-life billionaires, particularly Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Kutcher dismisses those comparisons.
“This guy’s nothing like Mark,” he said. “Some people have asked me about Elon Musk, and this is not based on Elon Musk. He might be the closest in wealth. I think The Corporation is the richest person in the world. Maybe Elon will be second — but after Starlink goes public, he might go back to first,” he added with a laugh.
“But it’s not based on him,” Kutcher continued. “It’s not based on any individual. There’s an air about people in very powerful positions — they have so much at their disposal that it appears as if everything they’re doing has this effortlessness to it. I hope to imbue that on camera.”
Beyond wealth and beauty, Kutcher says the series also reflects anxieties around artificial intelligence and the future of human value.
“We went from a world where the most valued thing was brute force, because that allowed you to do more work. Then the industrial revolution happened, and now we have the knowledge economy,” he said. “What happens when we commoditize intelligence? What becomes the most important thing? Is it kindness? Is it empathy? Or is it beauty?”
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