As reported on TechCrunch.
by JORDAN CROOK
Method actors are known to go to extreme lengths to understand the character they’re portraying. Natalie Portman dropped a whopping 20 lbs to play a ballerina in Black Swan.
Ashton Kutcher’s preparation for playing Steve Jobs in the biopic jOBS was so extreme it left him in the hospital. According to USA Today, he spent two days in the hospital after trying to stick to Steve Jobs’ fruitarian diet, which consists of eating fruits, nuts and seeds.
“I went to the hospital like two days before we started shooting the movie,” said Kutcher. “I was like doubled over in pain. My pancreas levels were completely out of whack. It was really terrifying … considering everything.”
“Considering everything” may be a reference to the cause of Jobs’ death, pancreatic cancer, in 2011. Jobs was known to maintain a fruitarian diet, which Kutcher worked into his preparation for the role, as well as studying hours of footage to replicate Jobs’ hunched walk and gestures.
But Kutcher feels he has a lot in common with the late Apple co-founder that stretches past a love for technology.
“He’s a guy that failed and got back on the horse,” said Kutcher. “I think we can all sort of relate to that in some place in our life where we are moving forward with something and we fall down. You have to have the guts to get back up and go again. I think I share that as well.”
Steve Wozniak, the other co-founder of Apple, mentioned that the first released clip of the movieisn’t as true to reality as he had hoped. He even noted that Josh Gad’s portrayal of Woz was more realistic than Kutcher’s Jobs. But perhaps Ashton’s incessant preparation has paid off in other, yet-unseen portions of the film.
jOBS premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday night, and is expected to hit theaters in April