Ashton Kutcher.

If you've never watched That '70s Show or Punk'd on television, or somehow missed seeing movies such as Cheaper By The Dozen, you might not know much about Ashton Kutcher.

He's tall. He works hard to express himself. He's far more earnest than his screen persona would lead you to believe.

Kutcher, 28, co-stars with Kevin Costner in The Guardian, an action drama about Coast Guard rescue swimmers that opens tomorrow. Costner plays a legend in the profession and Kutcher plays a brash recruit hoping to become a rescue swimmer. The actors were in Toronto to promote the movie earlier this month.

"Real heroes are hard to find," Kutcher says of the actual rescue swimmers, "and that's because they don't go out and talk about what they do. That's one of the reasons I chose this film -- for these guys, it's just going to work. They put their lives on the line for complete strangers. Most people wouldn't do that for a friend."

The Guardian, says the actor, is a film that made him a little uncomfortable. "And that's what I like, because when you're uncomfortable, you're growing. By the time I'm finished the movie I can go, 'Yeah, I'm comfortable with this now and I could do it again.' But I won't for that very reason -- that now it's comfortable. So now I have to find something else to tackle."

Not so long ago, Kutcher was tackling something else indeed: Biochemical engineering at the University of Iowa. He dropped out to be a model, and found his way to New York after winning an Iowa modelling contest in 1997.

Kutcher quickly found work on TV in That '70s Show. He also appeared in films that one assumes made him just as uncomfortable as they made an audience -- Just Married, My Boss's Daughter, Cheaper By The Dozen and A Lot Like Love. Ugh.

Just don't underestimate the guy because of his lousy movie choices. Kutcher co-created the successful TV show Punk'd. He also writes and produces and says he'll direct when the right project comes along.

(Some bright light in the press asks Kutcher if he'd ever 'punk' his wife, Demi Moore. Kutcher frowns. "I have to trust her for the rest of my life and she has to trust me, so that wouldn't make much sense," he says, sternly.)

Kutcher voices a character in Open Season, the animated film that also opens tomorrow, and he has a role in the upcoming Bobby, an ensemble film about the people in the hotel where Robert Kennedy was assassinated. That role, he says, he did as a favour. There was no money, and it was rushed.

"And it was a character, a drug dealer, who doesn't have any friends. So, going to the space of a guy who's not getting invited to the party -- we've all been there, and that's an uncomfortable place to go."

Uncomfortable? Must have been perfect.