Cool it with the word cougar, says Demi Moore, the 47-year-old wife of 31-year-old Ashton Kutcher.
"I'm certainly not the first person to be in a relationship with a younger man, but somehow I was plucked out as a bit of a poster girl," she says in the December issue of W. "I don’t know why that is. But I just kind of step back sometimes and say, 'There is some reason, and what is it that I have to share in a positive way?…I'd prefer to be called a Puma."
Months after meeting, the couple wed in 2005. (Moore was 42; Kutcher was Kutcher, 27.)
"The most overwhelming part of meeting someone that you already felt you had such a deep and old connection with is that your feelings are greater than the time you’ve had to actually be with one another," Moore says. "Now we've had the physical time together. The love he has for me makes me a better person by giving me the courage to take risks. I can fail and have someone who loves me just the same. I never knew it was quite possible."
She says their life revolves around daily dinners with her three girls, Rumer, 21, Scout, 18, and Tallulah, 15 (dad is Bruce Willis) and family trips to Idaho, where they own a ranch.
Moore says she does not plan on taking Kutcher's last name, which long has been rumored. (W points out that "'Moore' is the legacy of her first marriage, from 1981 to 1983, to singer Freddy Moore.")
"As a married woman, I am and will always be Mrs. Kutcher," she says. "But I have my career as Demi Moore."
Despite looking younger than ever, Moore – who headlines two upcoming indie films, Happy Tears and The Joneses – also laments how her age is stifling her career.
"The frustrating part is that the type of roles I'd be interested in are not really coming to me," she says. "I hate to say it's a function of my age — but yes, I think in some ways it is. The majority of [female] roles are geared between 25 and 35."
Helping her stay in touch with the current times? Twitter.
She now has 2.2 million Twitter fans. (Kutcher was the first person to reach 1 million followers. He now has 4 million.)
She tells W she loves the potential to create a "dialogue" between herself and fans.
"You post something and get your finger on the pulse," she says. "You know what people are interested in."
