Ashley Judd Biography
"Everything I've done has been personally fun, important, and meaningful to me."
|
Working as a hostess at the popular restaurant The Ivy, Judd made connections and within a year, she begun to land stage and screen roles. Most notably as Swoosie Kurtz’s troubled daughter, Reed Halsey, on the NBC female-centric drama, Sisters. Judd found the small role frustrating and negotiated an early release from her contract. Ashley then auditioned for the role of Christian Slater’s girlfriend in the comedy Kuffs in 1992, but as she told Movieline in 1997, she thought they were choosing a pair of breasts.” Her agent suggested she pass and accept the smaller role of a woman in a paint store. Knowing her mother would not approve of the onscreen nudity anyway, Judd took the smaller role and her career began to take shape from that point.
After her award-winning turn as the Tennessee heiress who sets out across Florida to find herself in Ruby in Paradise, Judd was cast as the sole survivor of a massacre, in Oliver Stone’s controversial film, Natural Born Killers in 1994. Because her emoting was accompanied by graphic flashbacks, the Motion Picture Association of America requested that Stone cut the scene, deeming it too violent and disturbing. Thankfully, Stone later restored it for the 1996 director’s cut video release. Ashley continued to add to her supporting roles, including a dramatic turn as Harvey Keitel’s junkie daughter in Smoke in 1995, Val Kilmer’s unfaithful wife in Heat in 1995 and a lawyer’s spouse in the John Grisham's, A Time to Kill in1996. Faring better on the small screen, Judd showed 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 Judd’s next project, Normal Life in 1996, was originally intended for theatrical release, it was relegated to HBO. It contained her disturbing, impassioned portrayal of an woman who drives her caring husband to a life of crime in order to satisfy her nature.
In her first Hollywood lead, Judd was cast as a doctor who, having escaped from a kidnapper, agrees to help the police track down the criminal in Kiss the Girls in 1997. Again, her intelligence and striking beauty were used to good effect. Next up, Ashley showed her sexy side as the local girl who falls for a drifter in The Locusts in 1997 and offered a memorable turn as a single mother in the sentimental period drama, Simon Birch in 1998. Judd returned to thrillers as an innocent woman who, after serving time for supposedly murdering her abusive husband, discovers he is still alive in Double Jeopardy in 1999.
In 2001, Judd decided to step outside the suspense thrillers genre, which she had become queen of, by starring as a betrayed woman who becomes obsessed with studying male behavior in the romantic comedy, Someone Like You, with Hugh Jackman. However, the film did not ignite any special box office sparks. That same year, following a two-year engagement, Judd married her boyfriend, Indy race driver, Dario Franchitti. Ashley split her time between homes in his native Scotland and her beloved Tennessee. After her marriage, Judd’s Hollywood output dropped radically, but between rooting for her beloved University of Kentucky sports teams, publicly supporting her sister’s battles with addiction, and spreading the word out for causes near to her heart like AIDS, Judd did manage to pop up in occasional film projects. Ashley returned in 2002 for High Crime, in which she reunited with her Kiss the Girls co-star MorganFreeman. The film did little to advance her career, though she did provide some fire and flavor to the softer follow-up, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood in 2002. Ashley played the flashback version of Vivi. Judd’s vibrant personality leaped off the screen. She was then cast in a small supporting role as Tina Modotti, lesbian lover of famed artist Frida Kahlo, in Frida in 2002, as a favor to her longtime friend, the film’s producer and star, Salma Hayek.
After a stint on Broadway in the role of Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Judd returned to the big screen in 2004 as Linda Lee Porter, the devoted wife to the great American composer/songwriter Cole Porter, played by Kevin Kline, in the elegant biopic De-Lovely. Receiving praise for her role as the pained wife of a homosexual, Judd reminded moviegoers what they had been missing since her reduced workload had taken effect. Despite a happy marriage and making her voice heard on behalf of various causes, Judd appeared in her buddy Joey Lauren Adams’ directorial debut, Come Early Morning in2006, as Lucy, a thirty something Southern girl who searches for love.
Ashley's next upcoming film is Tooth Fairy, set to be released November 13, 2009. She costars with Dwayne Johnson and Julie Andrews.
|
