Ashton Kutcher Reflects on Teen Arrest for Breaking Into High School: 'Humiliating and Embarrassing'

Ashton Kutcher is looking back on regrettable moments in his life.

In a new interview with Esquire, Kutcher, 44, gets candid about past mistakes, at one point comparing the public attention and judgment he received during his breakup with Demi Moore to a time when he was arrested as a teen for breaking into his high school.

He recalled being talked about by residents of his small Iowa hometown after being charged with felony third-degree burglary, according to Esquire.

"Feeling it again at 32 is, oof. It's humiliating and embarrassing," the Your Place or Mine actor said, also recalling how he'd overhear colleagues at events discussing his divorce and saying, "Can you believe what he f---ing did?"

But, Kutcher later added in the interview, "You own the s--- you did wrong, and you go forward."

Kutcher previously referenced his arrest while giving a speech when he received the Robert D. Ray Pillar of Character Award at Drake University's An All-Star Evening in West Des Moines back in 2017.

"You know," he joked at the time, "I'm probably the first guy to get this award who had a deferred judgment for a felony burglary for trying to break into my high school. By the way, deferred judgment, when you actually get it expunged from your record and you go to get your Global Entry pass, they remember. So it doesn't ever really go away."

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He continued in that speech, "I'm also probably the first guy to get this award for character who ever got pulled over by a state trooper while tripping on mushrooms. Not a proud moment. The trooper didn't know, so we got away with it, just said I had a headlight out — and I had several headlights out."

"I'm also probably the first person to get this award for character who had, like, his name splashed across every gossip magazine as an 'adulterer' like five years ago," Kutcher added.

Elsewhere in the speech, Kutcher explained that character comes "when those magazines tear you apart for something you may or may not have done and you gotta go out and perform tomorrow, with everyone looking at you like you might be an adulterer."

He continued, "Character comes out when you go to jail for breaking into your high school and everyone in town knows it. And you pull your baseball cap down as tight as you can over your eyes, and you try to make no one see that you're stupid or that you made a dumb mistake, and you're not a bad kid, you just made a bad choice. That's when character comes out."