Ashley Judd
ALL ABOUT ASHLEY JUDD
Full Name: Ashley Judd
Date of Birth: 19 April 1968
Place of Birth: Granada Hills, California, USA
Spouse: Dario Franchitti (professional race car driver; b. May 10, 1973; married December 12, 2001; engaged December 1999)
Relationship: Lyle Lovett (actor, singer; b. November 1, 1957), Matthew McConaughey (actor, b. November 4, 1969), Michael Bolton (singer, b. February 26, 1954), Brady Anderson (professional athlete), Robert De Niro (actor; b. August 17, 1943)
Family: Father - Michael Ciminella (marketing specialist), Mother - Naomi Judd (aka Diana Judd; singer; born on January 11, 1946), Sister - Wynonna Judd (aka Christina Claire Judd; singer; born on May 30, 1964)
Education: University of Kentucky (majored in French; graduated)
Playhouse West School and Theater Company, Los Angeles, CA
Bio:
Ashley judd is rightly best known and loved actresses making movies. She was born on April 19, 1968 in Los Angeles, CA, USA. She was born to Michael Ciminella - a marketing specialist and Naomi Judd - a singer . However when Ashley was just four years old her mother divorced her father. After the divorce, Judd was shuttled between California, Kentucky and Tennessee, attending 12 schools in 13 years. However she learnt to adapt to the changes in her lives.
Ashley was afforded the chance to attend the University of Kentucky, where she studied French and graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1990. She toyed with the idea of volunteering with the Peace Corps in Africa, but decided to move on to bigger and better things. Guided by her elder sister she decided to try her luck in Hollywood. While she was working as a waitress in a popular restaurant she tried her level best making connections with the Hollywood. Soon she started getting stage and screen roles. the most important amongst the small screen role was as Swoosie Kurtz’s troubled daughter Reed on the NBC drama “Sisters”. But this was not giving the kind of satisfaction that Ashley was looking for.
The ambitious actress auditioned for the pivotal role of Christian Slater’s girlfriend in the comedy “Kuffs” (1992) and after this career began taking its shape. “Ruby in Paradise” was what gave her the kind of fame she wanted. She works as a Tennessee heiress who sets out to find herself in Florida. “Natural Born Killers” was her next venture where Judd was cast as the sole survivor of a massacre who describes the traumatic event in detail.
Judd continued to add to her gallery of supporting roles with a dramatic turn as Harvey Keitel’s junkie daughter in “Smoke” and Val Kilmer’s unfaithful wife in “Heat” (both 1995) and she brought what she could to the underwritten part of a lawyer’s spouse in “A Time to Kill” (1996). Faring better on the small screen, Judd displayed her intelligence and skill (as well as a considerable amount of flesh) as the younger incarnation of Marilyn Monroe in “Norma Jean and Marilyn”, which brought her an Emmy nomination. While “Normal Life” (1996) was originally intended for theatrical release, it was relegated to HBO. Nevertheless, it contained her disturbing, impassioned portrayal of an unhinged woman who drives her caring husband to a life of crime in order to satisfy her acquisitive nature.
In her first Hollywood lead, Judd was cast as a capable doctor who, having escaped from a kidnapper, agrees to help the police track down the criminal in “Kiss the Girls” (1997). Again, her native intelligence and striking beauty were used to good effect, even if the surrounding efforts were not top-drawer. The actress exhibited her sexy side as the local girl who falls for a drifter in “The Locusts” (also 1997) and offered a memorable, if relatively brief, turn as a single mother in the sentimental period drama “Simon Birch” (1998). Judd returned to thrillers as an innocent woman who, after serving time for murdering her abusive husband, discovers he was still alive in “Double Jeopardy” (1999) and a suspected serial killer tracked by Ewan McGregor in “Eye of the Beholder” (2000).
Though both of her next efforts—the thriller Eye of the Beholder (2000) and the sentimental Where the Heart Is (2000)—were greeted with far less than an enthusiastic reception, Judd’s star is continuing to rise. In 2001, she starred as Jane Goodale in Someone Like You, a romantic comedy for which she reportedly received a career-high salary of $4 million, as well as Dexterity, a romantic drama co-starring her former on- and off-screen love interest McConaughey. She was then cast as Tina Modotti in the story based on the life of Frida Kahlo, “Frida” (2002). In fall 2003 she will make her Broadway debut as Maggie in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Ashley has recently purchased her dream house, a hundred-year-old home in Tennessee. She has big plans for its renovation, and states, that she is modeling it after C.S. Lewis’ ‘Chronicles of Narnia’, with cubbyholes and secret passageways, old gun cabinets and medicine chests built of chestnut. Ashley wants her dream home to be this way all because it was the first book that was ever read to her as a child. Ashley is very athletic and enjoys rock climbing, hiking and running. She is known as someone who is very intelligent. She has worked very hard to rasie her from the rags to riches and be where she is today.
Trivia:
Turned down a larger role in Kuffs (1992) because she was asked to do nude scenes. She responded, “My mother worked too hard for me to take my clothes off in my first movie.”
Hobbies: running, rock climbing, mountain hiking, yoga, gardening, cooking
[1990] Left the University of Kentucky a semester short of a bachelor’s degree in French, and minors in Anthropology, Art History, Theater, and Women’s Studies.
Mother and half-sister are country singers Naomi Judd & Wynonna Judd. She once worked cleaning her mom’s and sister’s tour bus for $10 a day.
Her father, Michael Ciminella, a marketing specialist in the horseracing industry, divorced Naomi Judd in 1972.
Was named one of “The 50 Most Beautful People In The World” by People Magazine. (1996, 2000 & 2002)
Known to be a avid fan of the University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball team, once not showering because she felt it would jinx them. For a cheerleading scene in her movie Someone Like You… (2001), she uses the Wildcats’ cheerleaders’ cheer routine, and thanks them in the credits.
Dated Robert De Niro
Dated Matthew McConaughey
Presented to the National Press Club on June 22nd, 2005 as a spokesperson for Youth Aids International.
Worldwide Spokesperson for Youth Aids International.
Gave testimony to U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Stopping Cross Generational Sex and Sexual Violence To Protect Young Women from AIDS in Developing Contries: A Call to Action,” June 23, 2005, as Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS and member of the Board of Directors of Population Services Inernational (PSI).
Though she only did two episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987), her character was loved by fans. Her image even appears on the Star Trek book ‘End Game’ (Star Trek New Frontier, No 4) by Peter David.
Was once considered for the female lead in Million Dollar Baby (2004).
Presented all the clues on the ‘The World AIDS Crisis’ category on the 12/2/2005 episode of the “Jeopardy!” (1984) TV show.
Visited Guatemala from 2 May 2006 to 5 May 2006, along with Salma Hayek and Colombian singer Juanes, as part of a Youth/AIDS campaign.
Named #77 in FHM magazine’s “100 Sexiest Women in the World 2006″ supplement. (2006).
In February 2006, she started a 47-day stay for the treatment of long-term depression in a Texas rehab center. (source: Entertainment Weekly, issue #934, May 18, 2007).
Salary
Someone Like You… (2001) $4,000,000
Eye of the Beholder (1999) $1,000,000
Kiss the Girls (1997) $450,000
Quotes:
“A lot of people over the years have been doing yoga and I think even more these days are expressing an interest in it. So there are a lot of manifestations of spirituality here in town.”
“And it blew my mind when I started to get wind of the fact that they actually liked me being around. That was humbling, because Kentucky basketball is a big deal, and I am not the biggest fan - I am just the most notorious one.”
“And of course there’s so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it’s obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.”
“And then all of a sudden, it was time for me to shoot the singing stuff and I just lacked confidence, so those were not my favorite days.”
“Both my husband and I give a lot of ourselves in what we do because that is our public lives; but in my private life, I have an intrinsic right to be left alone. ”
“But I grew up with a vocal genius in my house. And then I married someone with a very elite, very different kind of gift.”
“Everything I’ve done has been personally fun, important, and meaningful to me.”
“I bake so much at home, so I try to eat junk every other day. It’s kinda my thing.”
“I can’t think of anything I want and need that I don’t already have but at the same time, I’m not sated.”
“I did a lot of hiking and I loved it.”
“I enjoy other things too, but yoga is the fastest and most complete way to get fit, and there are so many beautiful instructors out there.”
“I get lonely when I’m a Playstation widow.”
“I have a lot of variety within me, and the dream role, I think, is actually a compilation of parts that express different aspects of my persona and personal interests.”
“I have a responsibility to nurture and shepherd my talent and when I’m living the parts of my life not related to that I feel I have the right to be left alone.”
“I just think that you have to be very protective of your own world. The self can be very inundated and if you’re porous, it can become problematic.”
“I think it’s easy for me to connect to some people, and I don’t know if that’s the same thing as falling in love whereas before, I might have said it was.”
“I think that being perceptive and having interests is nothing but an asset.”
“I think that my peace of mind and my solitude are greatly enhanced by being at home.”
“I think that we give the impression, to carry on your metaphor, that we go a little faster than we actually do. I’m fairly lazy so I’m always interested in slowing down.”
“I think that, as with marriage, you just know when it’s time to have kids.”
“I was always told I was special. And I was also assured that I had a gift and a purpose.”
“I’ve also learned from him that good acting is just seamless and you can’t fake it.”
“I’ve always been crazy for the American songbook.”
“I’ve been devoted to Alison Krauss for many, many years.”
“It’s funny, though, because when I first started going to races after we met, I was extremely nervous. It’s like being backstage and hoping you don’t trip over something or break an amp or accidentally speak into a live microphone, so I was really hesitant.”
“It’s so wrong to yearn so much, that you miss the joy of what you’re living. That’s definitely something I’ve learned and am willing to share.”
“It’s up to us to take pop culture back and to express quality and dignity for both boys and girls.”
“More often than what you’re suggesting, I find people are surprised that I have an urban side to me.”
“My house is the destination in our family. We still do some things in Mom and Pop’s kitchen but overwhelmingly at my house.”
“No, I don’t tolerate pressure from anyone about anything.”
One thing I did with my dad, which was very dramatic, was play outdoor hide-and-seek. We would play with grown-ups, and they took it so seriously.
“People say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it’s most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.”
“Regardless, we are a two career household, and it’s Dario’s season, and I’m really excited about going racing.”
“Ruby in Paradise and the intensity and quality that I was able to experience on Smoke were equally as important to me as working on this movie every day for three-and-a-half months.”
“Some Kentucky fans are a little more subdued.”
“That melody is a dying art and that this music is an incredibly important part of our collective cultural consciousness.”
“The movie is wonderful and London is the greenest city on earth. It has the most parks and the rose gardens were in bloom while we were there.”
“Well, in the mornings when I wake up, I don’t rash into things. I write, and that comes and goes. I’m in a heavy writing phase at the moment.”
“Well, the fact is that one imagination is critically important, and if you have had your imagination stimulated by what is basically a variety of subjects, you are much more amenable to accepting, to understanding and interacting with the realities of the world.”
“When I accept a role, I feel that as an artist I have to submit completely to the tutelage of my director. And while I expect to be heard and encouraged and honored, at the end of the day, man, it’s the way the director wants it.”
“When I was working on Eye of the Beholder, I played a character who is so aloof that my whole lifestyle became very aloof. If someone knocked on my door, there was a part of me that went into a rage, because I wanted to be isolated and alone.”
“Yeah, I’ve had the privilege to know a lot of really talented people.”
“You don’t stay married for 35 years by accident. I think that that’s willful and intentional and something that both people really want.”
Filmography:
Ashley Judd Filmography as an Actress:
2006 Come Early Morning
2006 Bug
2004 Twisted
2004 De-Lovely
2002 Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
2002 High Crimes
2002 Frida
2001 Someone Like You
2000 Where the Heart Is
1999 Double Jeopardy
1999 Eye of the Beholder
1998 Simon Birch
1997 Kiss The Girls
1997 The Locusts
1996 Normal Life
1996 A Time to Kill
1996 Norma Jean and Marilyn
1995 Naomi & Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge
1995 The Passion of Darkly Noon
1995 Heat
1995 Smoke
1994 Natural Born Killers
1993 Sisters: Season 04
1993 Ruby in Paradise
1992 Till Death Us Do Part
1992 Sisters: Season 03
1992 Kuffs
1991 Star Trek: The Next Generation 102: Darmok
1991 Sisters: Season 02
1991 Star Trek: The Next Generation 106: The Game
Ashley Judd Awards:
Golden Globe
2004 Best Actress - Comedy or Musical De-Lovely
Independent Spirit Award
1993 Best Actress Ruby in Paradise
National Society of Film Critics
1993 Best Actress - Runner-up Ruby in Paradise
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