Since the late 1990s, Ashton Kutcher has been a star of both the big and small screen, as well as finding success as an investor. What do we know about Kutcher’s ethnicity?
Christopher Ashton Kutcher was born in February 1978 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He and his twin brother Michael are the sons of Larry M. Kutcher and Diane Finnegan. Kutcher has stated that he has Irish, Czech, and German ancestry.
For more of what we know about Ashton Kutcher’s family background, read on.
Kutcher’s Family
Christopher Ashton Kutcher was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on February 7, 1978.
He is a fraternal twin, meaning two eggs were fertilized and developed together in the womb, rather than identical twins, who are formed when a fertilized egg divides in two and each half develops independently.
His twin, Michael, was born with significant health issues and diagnosed with cerebral palsy as an infant, and later underwent a heart transplant at the age of 13. Thankfully, Michael survived this ordeal and has since been an advocate for cerebral palsy charities and organ donation.
The twins also have an older sister, Tausha, who once appeared as a zombie during the Season 6 finale of “The Walking Dead”.
Ashton’s parents are Larry M. Kutcher, who was a factory worker at the time, and Diane, whose maiden surname was Finnegan. Diane worked for Procter & Gamble, a health and hygiene product retailer.
We know little about their personal histories as they have been happy to leave the spotlight to their son. Larry and Diane were Catholics and Ashton has described his early life as a “relatively conservative environment”.
Larry and Diane divorced when Ashton was 16, with Diane later remarrying. It’s unclear whether or not Larry did the same.
Ancestry
Ashton Kutcher has stated that he has Czech, German, and Irish ancestry. The majority of his ancestry is Czech, with Larry being predominantly Czech and Diane about a quarter. Diane also has a lot of Irish blood, hence her family name of Finnegan.
Kutcher’s German blood also apparently comes from Diane, who is also partly Swiss-German. Despite Ashton inheriting a German surname, Kutcher, from his father, there is seemingly little or no German blood on Larry’s side of the family.
The name Kutcher comes from his paternal great grandparents, who were Czech. They were Jan Kučera and Anna Lenoč, who later changed their name to Kutcher, likely to integrate better into life in Iowa, where Ashton’s paternal grandfather, Earl, was born.
Despite his diverse European ancestry, Ashton’s family has lived in the United States for several generations, especially on Diane’s side, with most of her ancestors having lived in Pennsylvania.
According to research conducted by Ethnicelebs.com, Ashton’s paternal grandfather, Earl Kutcher, was the brother of Ashton’s great-grandmother, Leona. This means Larry and Diane are first cousins, once removed.
The Future
The Eastern European connections in Ashton’s family won’t end with him. His wife, Mila Kunis, was born on August 14, 1983, in what was then Soviet Ukraine.
Mila was born into a Jewish family and they had to be discreet about their religious background to avoid persecution and discrimination.She and her family emigrated when Mila was seven, relocating to the United States on a religious-refugee visa, where she has lived ever since.
She took a DNA test with 23andMe, sharing that she expected to discover something exotic but that she is about 97% Ashkenazi Jewish.
Ashton and Mila married on July 4, 2015, and have two children together. Their children are a daughter, Wyatt, and son, Dimitri. Combining Ashton and Mila’s genetic heritage, it seems Wyatt and Dimitri must be about half Ashkenazi Jewish, more than a quarter Czech and also German and Irish.
Mila is also proud of her family’s recent history, keen that her children and husband should learn Russian, her first language, in addition to English.