Ashton Kutcher: Playing Steve Jobs Was 'Terrifying'

The 34-year-old actor helped unveil the premiere of the biopic jOBS on Friday at the closing film of the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

Kutcher plays the Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs from the company's humble origins in the 1970s until the launch of the first iPod in 2001. A digital entrepreneur himself, Kutcher said he considers Jobs a personal hero -- and knows he's opened himself up to criticism.

"It's really scary when everyone has a right to be like a legitimate critic. Because he was very public. There are people here who probably know him way better than I do, who shook his hand, knew him, hung out with him. So that's terrifying. Especially when you're playing somebody that people really admired," Kutcher said.

The actor watched "hundreds of hours of footage," listened to Jobs' past speeches and interviewed several of his friends to prepare for the role.

Kutcher was up to the challenge of playing Jobs, who died in October 2011, in part because of his admiration for the man who created the Macintosh computer and the iPod.

"I don't know if there's ever been an entrepreneur who's had more compassion and care for his consumer than Steve Jobs," Kutcher said. "He wanted to put something in your hand that you could use and you could use it easily... and he really cared about that."

jOBS will be released in the next few months.

Contains video from APTN