Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2013, just before the release of the film Jobs. Its claim that experts considered Kutcher Oscar-worthy did not pan out: the film got mixed-to-poor reviews and he was not nominated.
Sometimes we would like to have what someone else has, but few people make the effort to find out how and why that person succeeded. For example, if you want to be like Warren Buffett and achieve what he achieved, to begin with you have to learn what he learned: read what he read and understand in detail what motivated him.
The actor Ashton Kutcher may have some experience with this. In a discussion on Quora, someone asked how Ashton Kutcher had managed to resemble Steve Jobs so closely, not just physically but in everything else, since according to the experts his performance in the film is worthy of an Oscar. To readers’ surprise, the answer came from Ashton Kutcher himself.
He says that once he had read the script, he spent three months preparing for the role, living like Steve Jobs, eating what Steve Jobs ate and trying to understand why he was the way he was and made the decisions he made.
Kutcher says he began consuming every kind of content about the legendary Steve Jobs:
I started watching every interview and documentary about Jobs. I looked for consistent patterns of behaviour, as well as his ideals. What I heard him repeat most often across many interviews was that we should all be brave enough not to adapt to the world we live in, but to create the world we are going to live in.
He used to pause before answering questions, nodded when he agreed with and/or understood what was being said, bowed in a “namaste” when he was praised, and at the same time looked on with contempt when he came across someone he didn’t like. It was easy to tell how he felt, because he didn’t hide his gestures.
He gestured with his hands as he spoke, like any good storyteller. He counted on his fingers the opposite way to everyone else, starting with the little finger. He stretched out words like “Nowwwww” and “aaaaand” to give himself time to think about what he was going to say next.
But all of this is just detail. I soon realized that to learn “what a person is like”, the key, in the end, is to learn “why that person is the way they are”.
I wanted to know what he liked and to pursue what Jobs pursued, so I started consuming what he consumed.
I read the books he read, and not only the ones about management and business. I even read the books on diet, healing and philosophy of life. I researched all the artists he admired until I understood why he admired them, and I studied the entrepreneurs who had once inspired him, because I wanted to know the possible sources of his inspiration.
I even ate the same food he ate, such as grapes, carrot juice and a mostly vegetarian diet.
I met the people he knew, his employees and some people who had known him since childhood. I wanted to be in the environment Steve Jobs had moved in.
In the end I understood that his products were a reflection of who Steve Jobs himself was: elegant, intelligent, detail-oriented, precise, artistic, bold, visionary, complicated, efficient, fun, entertaining, far-reaching, imperfect and beautiful inside and out, just like Steve.
That is how Kutcher got inside the mind of this genius in order to play the role of his life in Hollywood, but for the rest of us it shouldn’t be any different.
Many people have succeeded by surrounding themselves with people who add positive value to their lives. If you hang around with criminals from a young age, you increase the chances of ending up becoming one. If you spend your time with entrepreneurs, you increase the chances of ending up starting your own company.
I have also noticed how many people won’t read a book on how to influence people (even though they need it) or on how to build wealth, because they say it’s all nonsense. Yet these are the books that inspired Buffett, for example. Take the book One Thousand Ways to Make $1000, or how to make a million dollars: Warren Buffett himself acknowledged that it was the book that motivated him from a very young age to do what he does today and achieve what he has achieved.
Further reading
Featured image: David Shankbone, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
