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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).
In 2001, Judd starred opposite Hugh Jackman as a betrayed woman who
becomes obsessed with studying male behavior in the romantic-comedy
feature "Someone Like You," which did not ignite any special box office
sparks. A return to form in the middlebrow thriller "High Crimes" (2002)
as a high powered laywer stunned by her husband's shocking past--opposite
her "Kiss the Girls" co-star Morgan Freenan (though not a sequel)--also
did little to advance the actress craft or audience pull, though she did
provide some fire and flavor to her softer follow-up, the seriocomic
"Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" (2002), playing the flashback
version of Vivi, the highly strung Ellen Burstyn character. She was then
cast as in a small but crucial supporting role as Tina Modotti in the
story based on the life of Frida Kahlo, "Frida" (2002), as a favor to
Judd's longtime friend Salma Hayek. After a stint on Broadway in the role
of Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and a never-realized flirtation with
the role of "Catwoman" (later played by Halle Berry), Judd returned to the
big screen in 2004 as Linda Lee Porter, the devoted wife and muse to the
great American composer/songwriter Cole Porter (Kevin Kline) in the
elegant and sophisticated biopic "De-Lovely." |
