Despite expressing doubts about shopping and relationships, Ashton Kutcher is enjoying marriage both on and off screen. Steve Pratt reports

ACTOR Ashton Kutcher is surrounded by beautiful women on and off screen C thanks to marriage to Demi Moore and co-starring with Cameron Diaz. But the boyishlooking actor has girl trouble in new movie What Happens In Vegas.

He and Diaz plays strangers who wake up in the gambling city and discover theyve got married during a night of partying.

They plan is to annul the marriage until one of them hits the jackpot on the fruit machines after playing the others quarter. The newlyweds spend the rest of the movie trying to undermine each other and get their hands on the money.

Kutcher turned 30 this year, but doesnt pay much attention to age.

I just feel so darned grown up, he says. The number is inconsequential, I know a lot of 40- year-olds who act like ten-year-olds, and a lot of ten-year-olds who act like 40-year-olds.

They should change the measure from how long youve been here to how much responsibility you have or have taken on in your life. That should be the age barometer for me.

You should have a docket that you have to fill in, send in and they send you a thing back which says youre actually 54. Or vice versa.

To me, its just the level of responsibility you have in your life, and 30 was just a reason to throw a party.

Perhaps having an older wife C hes 15 years Moores junior C makes him more mature. Dont know, I really dont. Ive only been married once, says Kutcher.

Its weird, when I was 13 my parents got divorced and my dad moved down the block. Then, when I was 14, my mom moved to a different city, so Ive kind of always been around my friends were always a little bit older.

My best friend was six years older than I was, he was the neighbour kid. I spent a lot of time with my mom and her friends when I was young. I was always more interested in adult conversation. So maybe I just like adults. I like grown-ups, I guess.

When it comes to understanding the opposite sex, Kutcher is baffled by shopping. If a guy wants something he goes out and buys it.

Women go to the store having no idea what theyre going to buy, or what theyre even doing. Its like a whole different sport. Its like going to a football game to maybe watch a game. I dont get it, he says.

Guys at home, were working on something and say, I need a wrench, and I go and buy a wrench. Thats how we do shopping. Girls have this whole other thing. Its not like youre at home going, I need a shoe and know the kind of shoe that you need. Youre just going to look at the shoes.

Kutcher is happily married in real life, but seems to make a habit of playing feckless newlyweds on screen. In What Happens In Vegas, he and Diazs characters finally realise theyre in love.

You have to be able to connect to the end of the movie in order to deliver the ending, he says. If you cant connect to what that is, its hard to really feel that. Its just an open awareness of love, he says, then revealing the secret of his successful relationship.

Theres actually a book that a friend of mine just recently wrote.

Hes actually my teacher, and hes taught me how to navigate a relationship successfully.

The book is called The Spiritual Rules of Engagement. Its really a guide of how you navigate a relationship successfully, so I have to credit a lot of the success in my relationship to my teacher.

As for the getting married first, falling in love later strategy of the films couple, Kutcher says that with the divorce rate so high, why not try something different.

The biggest problems in relationships in general is that guys are raised with the goal of having sex. Like when youre a teenage boy, the whole goal is having sex, right? Some day Im going to have sex, and then Im going to be a man, and thats going to be life.

Women have this whole goal of getting married, of finding the husband, so were kind of missing each other there. But its all about the wedding event. Nobodys thinking of walking round the house in slippers and hes in the robe with his gut hanging out.

His character gets married through drunkenness, so whats the worst thing that hes done under the influence of alcohol. He has, he admits, done some stupid things.

The worse was probably while at college and involved a frozen river.

My buddy dared me to walk across the river. I got about halfway and was so drunk that I slipped, fell down and just passed out. My buddy didnt come and save me, because he didnt know how thick the ice was.

So I ended up sleeping there a couple of hours and waking up, I was like dude, why didnt you come and get me?. And he was like I thought the ice would break with two of us on there.

So that was pretty bad, that was not bright.

ö What Happens In Vegas (12A) opens in cinemas tomorrow and is reviewed on Page 11

11:07am Thursday 8th May 2008

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