'No Strings' cast frees up Kutcher's comedy skills

"This is going to kill me," says Ashton Kutcher, on a couch before the TV in a Four Seasons suite. The Packers-Eagles playoff game is going to kick off in minutes, just as his next series of interviews is scheduled to begin. "I had all morning to watch that crap Baltimore-Kansas City game (a 30-7 Ravens blowout) and this is the one that affects who the Bears are going to play next week."

The Iowa native can be excused for his split focus. He's only promoting his new film co-starring Natalie Portman and directed by Ivan Reitman ("No Strings Attached"), and this is football. And he wasn't satisfied, by any means, with his Iowa Hawkeyes pulling a stunning upset over No. 12 Missouri in the Insight Bowl just before New Year's. ("We should have been competing for a national championship. It's probably the most talented Iowa Hawkeye football team we've ever had.")

Still, he finds it in himself to relive the drudgery of being in a movie with Ms. "Black Swan" herself, by a director he reveres, with a supporting cast featuring Kevin Kline and some extremely promising young actresses - Olivia Thirlby, Lake Bell, Mindy Kaling and indie darling Greta Gerwig.

"You wake up in the morning, you ask God why," he says, rolling his eyes heavenward. "No, all the supporting cast in this movie, and Natalie, of course, were awesome. Every day I got to go to work with someone I wanted to work with. I've been trying to do a movie with Natalie, probably as long as I've been acting. For her to take on something like this - in some ways a lot of people would see it as a risk. She comes off this serious work; she can probably book any role she wants, and she's like, 'Now I'm going to do something people don't expect me to do.' And she does it flawlessly.

"She was already attached when they asked me to do it, and I was like, 'Yes!' But trying not to act too excited. Because I honestly just wanted to see if I could go toe-to-toe with her."

Big problems

As it turns out, toes aren't the only body parts that meet in the movie. The film explores the pressing sociological dilemma of whether two unbelievably attractive people who are also very nice and smart and ambitious can maintain a friendship while using each other for spectacular sex. Most viewers will look at those two and remember all the times they struggled with that very conundrum in their own lives. Still, it falls to Kutcher to provide an answer, having presumably done the research.

"You're asking the wrong guy," he says, dropping his tone confidentially. "I'm eight years married or whatever, eight years together. Um ... I think it can work for a little while. I think it's more of a courting method than a fixed arrangement. I think eventually you come up against that cliff and you either jump or go back the other way. It just seems like a setup for somebody to get hurt. (laughs) Whenever something's too good to be true, it probably is."

Acting was a relief

For Kutcher, who has done his share of producing, it was something of a relief to be just acting in the project (although he had some input into script revisions and helped with casting) - especially for this director.

"I have 100 percent admiration for Ivan Reitman," says the 32-year-old of the maker of "Ghostbusters," "Stripes" and "Dave." "I know that he's done this and that and this - I'll be talking with him and I'll reference something, I won't even realize I'm referencing a line from one of his movies. I think three times at points in the shooting, when I wasn't really paying attention, he's like, 'You know, I made that movie.' (humbly) 'Yeah ... you did.'