Ashley Judd Biography

Ashley Judd
Biography

Birth Name
Ashley Tyler Ciminella
Date of birth (location)
19 April 1968
Granada Hills, California, USA

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Described by her own mother as "an intellectual pinup", Ashley Judd has portrayed a wide array of characters that possess a fierce determination coupled with an alluring sensuality. Whether she is playing a Southerner starting over (her breakthrough role in "Ruby in Paradise" 1993), a pre-fame Marilyn Monroe (HBO's "Norma Jean & Marilyn" 1996) or a kidnap victim who managed to elude her captor ("Kiss the Girls" 1997), this actress delivers strong, beautiful, delicate and forthright performances that have impressed critics and audiences alike.

      When her parents divorced, Judd was shuttled between California, Kentucky and Tennessee, attending 12 schools in 13 years. A bookish child, she developed an early interest in performing and, goaded by her older sister, opted to try her luck in Hollywood after completing college. Working as a hostess at the popular restaurant The Ivy, Judd made industry connections and within a year had begun to land stage and screen roles, perhaps most notably as Swoosie Kurtz's troubled daughter Reed on the NBC drama "Sisters". Judd, however, found the small screen role frustrating and negotiated an early release from her contract. The ambitious actress auditioned for the pivotal role of Christian Slater's girlfriend in the comedy "Kuffs" (1992) but as she told Lawrence Grobel in Movieline (October 1997): she "thought they were boiling it down to a booby factor--choosing a pair of breasts." Her agent suggested she pass and accept instead the smaller role of a woman in a paint store and her career began to take shape.

      After her award-winning turn as the Tennessee heiress who sets out to find herself in Florida in "Ruby in Paradise", Judd was cast as the sole survivor of a massacre who describes the traumatic event in detail in "Natural Born Killers" (1994). Because her emoting was accompanied by graphic flashbacks, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) requested that director Oliver Stone cut the scene, deeming it too violent and disturbing. (Stone restored it for the 1996 "director's cut" video release.) 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.

Judd lives on a 100-year-old farm in Tennessee, close to both Naomi and Wynonna. In addition to McConaughey, she has also been romantically linked to De Niro and the pop singer Michael Bolton. In April 2000, Judd announced her engagement to Dario Franchitti, a Scottish race car driver. The couple married in Scotland in December 2001.