Channeling his inner Maverick. Ashton Kutcher ditched his shirt for a game of football while enjoying a day at the beach with wife Mila Kunis.
The Two and a Half Men alum, 44, was photographed playing a casual game of catch by the ocean in Santa Barbara, California, on Saturday, August 6, with friends. Kutcher, wearing a white cap and a black and red swimsuit, grinned while tossing the ball around and laughed as he dove into the sand as he lunged for a catch. Kunis, 38, for her part, joked around with her husband as she relaxed in a pair of denim shorts and a graphic tee.
In addition to showing off his football skills, the Dude, Where’s My Car? actor was also seen boogie boarding in the surf before chatting with friends.
Kutcher’s beach day comes just ahead of his appearance on Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge, where he opened up about being diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder for the first time.
“Like two years ago, I had this weird, super rare form of vasculitis, that, like, knocked out my vision, it knocked out my hearing, it knocked out, like, all my equilibrium,” the No Strings Attached star revealed in a conversation with the TV host. “You don’t really appreciate it until it’s gone. Until you go, ‘I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to see again, I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to hear again, I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to walk again.’”
Telling Grylls, 48, that he is “lucky to be alive,” Kutcher continued: “The minute you start seeing your obstacles as things that are made for you, to give you what you need, then life starts to get fun, right? You start surfing on top of your problems instead of living underneath them.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, vasculitis is an inflammation of blood vessels that “cause the walls of the blood vessels to thicken, which reduces the width of the passageway through the vessel.” The condition can lead to organ and tissue damage.
This is not the first time that Kutcher’s health issues have made headlines. In October 2021, Kunis revealed that he was hospitalized with severe pancreatitis while preparing to play Steve Jobs in his 2013 biopic. “He was dumb. He also only ate grapes at one point. It’s so stupid,” the Bad Moms star told host Sean Evans during an episode of “Hot Ones” at the time. “We ended up in the hospital, twice, with pancreatitis. So, fact check, yes, it was really dumb.”
While preparing to play the late Apple founder in Jobs, Kutcher got into character by replicating his extreme diet. “First of all, the fruitarian diet can lead to, like, severe issues,” the Butterfly Effect star told USA Today in January 2013. “I went to the hospital like two days before we started shooting the movie. I was, like, doubled over in pain. My pancreas levels were completely out of whack. It was really terrifying … considering everything.”
During his episode of “Hot Ones” in September 2019, Kutcher recalled experiencing intense back pain just two weeks before filming began. “Two weeks before we started shooting, all of a sudden I had this pain in my back, and through the night it got worse and worse and worse and worse,” the Ranch star recalled at the time. “I ended up in the hospital on the maximum dose of Dilaudid because my pancreas was crazy out of whack.”
He continued: “And then I’m getting freaked out, like ‘This is the ghost of Steve Jobs taking over my pancreas,’ and I’m freaking out and it turns out it was the carrot juice causing this crazy pancreatitis.”
Kutcher and Kunis, who tied the knot in June 2015, met on the set of That ’70s Show, which ran for eight seasons from 1998 to 2006. The pair — who share daughter Wyatt, 7, and son Dimitri, 5 — are set to reprise their roles as Michael Kelso and Jackie Burkhart, respectively, in the upcoming Netflix reboot, That ’90s Show.
“Mila and I were contemplating it,” the Iowa native told Variety last month. “We thought, ‘Listen, we’re only in the position that we’re in because of that show, so let’s just go back and do this.’ We just went back and had fun for a week. It was so random and fun.”
Keep scrolling to see more photos of Kutcher and Kunis’ beach day: