At the recent Macworld / iWorld conference in San Francisco, Ashton Kutcher and Josh Gad sat down to discuss their respective roles as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the upcoming ‘jOBS’ biofilm about the famous co-founder – and they both had some pretty interesting things to say about the experience.
Kutcher’s comments were particularly striking. The actor revealed that playing the role of Steve Jobs changed his life, and how he viewed the world. Below are some quotes from Kutcher reported by Mashable and TheNextWeb:
For Ashton Kutcher, playing the role of Steve Jobs in the upcoming film jOBS was a life-changing experience.
Speaking at Macworld Thursday, Kutcher said, “ Playing this character has changed my life, and changed me as a person.”
“Steve is fresh in our minds, he’s a person who we have a daily reminder of in our hands,” said Kutcher. “It’s not like playing Lincoln. We don’t have a whole lot of video footage of Lincoln.”
TNW:
“For me, this is an iconic hero and someone I try to emulate when I talk to founders about stuff,” Kutcher said about his role as Jobs.
Kutcher said that he took away three main lessons from portraying jobs in the film: Focus, compassion for the consumer, and believing you can do the impossible. He also made reference to a famous quote given by Jobs in an interview about the most empowering way to live your life (via TheNextWeb):
“Steve believed it was possible to do something impossible,” says Kutcher, alluding to the third thing that he took away from the film. He made reference to the following famous quote that Jobs gave in an interview:
“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.
That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that
other people can use.Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
Kutcher says that this stuck with him. “When I heard that,” says Kutcher, “he was talking to me, and he was talking to you. He was saying ‘don’t settle’ for what life gives you, make life better.”
Kutcher said he spent over 100 hours listening to recordings of Steve Jobs’ voice from various presentations, interviews, and speeches, trying his best to absorb the essence of what Steve Jobs was really like as a person. Josh Gad also noted that he actually learned to program to prepare for his role as Steve Wozniak.
I really wish I had been there to hear Kutcher and Gad talk for myself – it sounds like it was a pretty amazing (and even inspirational) presentation! The film is set to publicly hit theaters on April 19th.
