Kutcher’s stupid smarts

Ashton Kutcher doesn’t care if people think he’s an idiot, said Mickey Rapkin in Elle. The onetime model is often mistaken for the lovable boneheads and stoners he plays in movies like Dude, Where’s My Car? and on TV’s That ‘70s Show. “People fill in the blanks really fast,” says the 35-year-old actor. “They go, ‘Oh my God, he’s on a show and [plays] stupid, so he must be stupid.’ I can’t control that, nor do I try to, nor do I want to.” Offscreen, Kutcher is actually something of a tech-investing savant. He bought a stake in Skype in 2009 when it was valued at $2.75 billion; the Internet firm was later sold for more than three times that. His venture capital fund A-Grade Investments has backed promising Web startups like music site Spotify and couch-surfing tool Airbnb. Kutcher says that his dumb reputation only helps his business career. “There’s something advantageous about having people underestimate your intellect, insomuch as a lot of things are revealed to you.” Executives will blab in front of him, thinking he won’t understand their corporate talk. “And the next thing you know, you have information you wouldn’t normally have.”