Kutcher was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Diane (nee Finnegan), a Procter & Gamble employee, and Larry M. Kutcher, a factory worker. His father is of Czech descent, while his mother is of Czech, German, and Irish ancestry. Kutcher was raised in a "relatively conservative" Catholic family. He has an older sister named Tausha and a fraternal twin brother named Michael, who had a heart transplant when the brothers were young children.

Ashton Kutcher received widespread criticism for his appearance in a Popchips ad campaign in May 2012. The campaign featured Kutcher as an Indian man "looking for love" in a dating ad-style spoof. Kutcher's use of brown face paint and a stereotypical Indian accent was deemed racially insensitive and offensive and received backlash from online viewers and members of the Indian-American community.  Emmy-award winning comedian Aziz Ansari featured the commercial in his 2015 Netflix comedy-drama Master of None, to make a point that South Asian discrimination is taken less seriously than Black discrimination although they are both forms of racism. "Asians and Indians are the new clownable minority," comedian Hasan Minhaj, now a correspondent on The Daily Show, lamented in a YouTube response to Popchips. "You have a s--ty accent and you're not even being racist correctly. If you're gonna be racist, come correct with your racism."  Ravi Patel gave his argument in a 2015 interview, "I don't find stereotypical roles to always be offensive. I think stereotypes are there for a reason and are a very big part of comedy. It's interesting, [Aziz's] issue is specifically with Indian stereotypes, but you don't see him walking away from other [racial] stereotypes," Patel said. "You need to look at it on a case-by-case basis. Like in Transformers, Michael Bay wanted me to wear a turban. I was like 'Why do you want me to wear a turban?' And he said, 'Because it's funny,' and I said 'Well, that's not a good enough reason to wear a turban.' I've stood up for stuff that's offensive every time."

what is the brownface controversy?
The campaign featured Kutcher as an Indian man "looking for love" in a dating ad-style spoof. Kutcher's use of brown face paint and a stereotypical Indian accent