Okay, Smart Guy

By the time he showed up for a 10-day training session run by Coast Guard instructors, pretty much everyone was blown away by how conditioned he was. "Ashton, he was a stud," says co-star Peter Gail.

Once filming started, though, the real challenge for Kutcher was the character development. He wanted to play the part, he says, because "there is something about what these guys do and how they go about doing it. It was magnetic." But what, exactly, made his character the aloof elitist he had become? On a flight to Elizabeth City, N.C., to film on location, Kutcher confided in Costner that he was concerned because Jake's back story had yet to be determined in the script.

"We were in the last-minute grind and I was thinking, who is this guy and where is he from?" Kutcher says.

He knew something traumatic had to have happened to his character, so he decided to take a page from his own life and use it -- not as a specific model, but as his motivation.

He decided to act from an experience he had at 18 -- to relive the fallout from the one night when he really was a bonehead.

The Early Years

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Born Christopher Ashton Kutcher (he was known as Chris until his modeling career took off), Kutcher has an older sister as well as a twin brother, Michael, who was born with health problems and had a heart transplant at age 13. He grew up in tiny Homestead, Iowa, population approximately 100. His parents were both factory workers -- dad Larry at General Mills, and mom Diane at Procter & Gamble. They divorced when he was 14, but he remains close to both of them.

He also formed a friendship with his high school principal, Tom McDonald, and dated the daughter of McDonald's live-in girlfriend.

"He could be silly, but Chris was a brilliant young man," says McDonald, who felt Kutcher was a lot like he had been in high school. "He would act goofy dumb and we'd just have fun."

Most of Kutcher's antics were harmless. But there was one big exception. "I was 18 and I was a really good student and a good kid, and didn't get in trouble, and then I broke into my high school," Kutcher says matter-of-factly.

He broke in with a cousin in the middle of the night. His line for years has been that they were trying to steal a test. But McDonald says there were accusations of trying to break into vending machines to steal cash -- and Kutcher now admits that it was about money.

Anyway, they set off a silent alarm and Kutcher was caught trying to get away. He spent the night in jail, and eventually was convicted of third-degree burglary and sentenced to 180 hours of community service and three years' probation (his record was later expunged). At the time, he had been anticipating acceptances to both MIT and Purdue to study engineering. He had been a football player, a star in school plays, a well-liked, popular guy everyone expected to be one of the town's success stories.

And suddenly he was the town outcast.