Ashton Kutcher reveals his ‘real’ name at the Teen Choice Awards

At Sunday night’s Teen Choice Awards, Ashton Kutcher won the Ultimate Choice Award or what he called the “old guy” award. I’m assuming he liked to call it the “old guy” award since he is no longer a teen but I’m not sure. As you will see in the video clip below, his acceptance speech was highly influenced by his recent role as Steve Jobs in the movie Jobs.

He mentioned that he felt like a fraud as he revealed his real first name, Chris, to the audience. Ashton is actually his middle name. I think calling himself a fraud is a little extreme, however, he was probably just trying to get the crowd’s attention. He started to go by Ashton at the age of 19 when he became an actor.

Ashton had explained that in Hollywood there are a lot of insider secrets to keeping an actor’s career successful. So really, Ashton Kutcher is his stage name. Many actors have stage names. A stage name is similar to the your business name. It holds your identity. After all, names and logos are at the heart of branding. The name Ashton is much more unique and memorable than the name Chris. I don’t have enough fingers to count how many Chris’ I do know but I definitely don’t know any Ashton’s. By changing his name, he made himself more memorable. Continue reading →