Ashley Judd has suddenly caught the public's eye with her beauty and her high-profile beaus. And she has Hollywood's eye with her first starring role in a big-budget studio movie, Kiss the Girls. How much longer will a woman who's never doubted she had a destiny--and who has the ability to use two four-syllable "p"-words in the same short sentence--remain the least famous female in the Judd family?
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Ashley Judd looms larger in the public imagination than her acting career would seem to justify. Since her breakthrough performance in the 1993 independent film Ruby in Paradise, she has tended to take interesting roles in smaller pictures, or smaller roles in interesting bigger pictures, rather than starring roles in mediocre studio fare. So, while she has been praised for her performances in films like A Time to Kill _and _Heat, and was certainly seen by a huge audience in Norma Jean and Marilyn on HBO, she is not as famous for being the gifted actress many in Hollywood believe her to be, as she is for being the daughter of Naomi Judd, the sister of Wynonna Judd, and the girlfriend of such celebrities as Matthew McConaughey and Michael Bolton. And being just plain beautiful.
But talk to Ashley, who is, alternately, the proverbial steel magnolia and a sensitive, serious actress, and you quickly come to understand that this 29-year-old woman is unlikely to remain famous strictly by association. Her first starring role in a big-budget studio picture, opposite Morgan Freeman in Kiss the Girls, may be the occasion for the change of status.
Just now, Judd is arriving late from her workout at the gym in the hotel she's called home in L.A. since she moved to Tennessee after her Malibu house burned down in 1993. She orders mushroom soup, vegetarian dumplings and carrot juice from room service, grabs a bottle of water from the refrigerator in the room, and puts a band around the small clump of hair that barely covers her neck. "I drink a lot of water," she says. "I happen to think that ponytails and water are the keys to happiness. It's amazing to me how little people drink. My grandfather didn't drink very much. The only time I remember him being sick was after my grandmother died and he got malnutrition. It happens a lot to men who've been cooked for all their lives. Isn't that sad?"
Judd carries pictures of her grandparents wherever she goes. They were the ones who gave her a sense of stability in her life when her mother kept her and her older sister, Wynonna, on the move between Kentucky, California and Tennessee. Naomi Judd wrote all about this in her book Love Can Build a Bridge, which was made into a TV miniseries a few years ago, but Ashley's memories don't always coincide with her mother's. Certain facts are indisputable: her parents divorced when she was very young, she attended 12 schools in 13 years, she spent time living with her father and her grandparents, and she didn't sing. The singing Judds, Naomi and Wynonna, became famous when Ashley was 14. Ashley chose to go to college (the University of Kentucky), to spend time in France and to study acting. As you'll see, she always had a sense of her own destiny.
LAWRENCE GROBEL: This may be a strange way to begin a conversation, but after seeing one of your new films. The Locusts, I have to note that this is the first time I've talked to an actress whose character was called a "cum-bucket" on-screen.
ASHLEY JUDD: All striving for distinction. It's one of the most searing insults I've ever heard, but I don't think it has anything to do with my character's sexuality; it's exclusively about the male character who says it.
Q: The first time you looked at the rough cut of The Locusts, what did you think?
A: There was an extremely compelling, very touching movie in there. It needed big-time cutting; the score was wrong; the dialogue editing needed improvement. What gratified me was that the director, J.P. Kelley, asked for my notes. He really esteemed me with his faith, because he let me participate a lot while we were actually shooting.
Q: You had no scenes with your costar Kate Capshaw, but did you get to know her at all?
A: A little bit. She and [her husband] Mr. Spielberg came down to visit a couple of times.
Q: You call him Mr. Spielberg?
A: Well, sure. Why not? He's my elder. Until you achieve a certain level of friendliness and intimacy with people--a lot of times people do things because they can. That's something that I do because I can't. It's like once you've kissed, you've kissed. So maybe don't kiss for a couple extra weeks because it's more interesting that way.
Q: You've lost me, Ms. Judd. But tell me, how old were you when you first kissed a boy?
A: First grade. I had a friend named Will Robbins, and my sister was best friends with his older sister and they liked to try and make us kiss all the time, which we did. I had a fantastic crush on Will--we were bonded because he and I were the only kids in our class sent up to a superior reading level.
Q: How did you deal with attending 12 schools in 13 years?
A: I enjoyed school. I knew that there was a promise in store every single day. In my home life, I was simply told that I was special. I'm a very classic nature vs. nurture, because I obviously I had certain predilections, I but I was encouraged in my propensities and that's what really sealed my fate.
Q: Did you ever doubt that you had a destiny?
A: [Little girl's voice] No. I wasn't traipsing around saying, "I'm going to do this, I'm going to be that." But I did have a sense of purposefulness. When I was in the 10th grade I made my vow to myself. That was more about letting the world put its veneer of ambition on me, giving it words, having that Scarlett O'Hara "I'll never be hungry again" kind of pledge.
Q: What about the yearning to become an actor?
A: I started playing when I was really little in a way that I now define as acting.
Q: You've said it was embarrassing to want to be an actor. Why?
A: That's when I didn't know what constituted acting. The arts are not something that we advocate for our children in a forceful, articulated and revered way in America. So I didn't know what it was all about. I didn't want to be a celebrity. That's what was embarrassing to me.
Q: Ruby in Paradise is the film that first woke up Hollywood to your possibilities. You said you were the happiest you've ever been making that film. Still true?
A: It will never be replaced in terms of its value and charm, but I have definitely been happier since.
Q: What's the biggest rush you've gotten from acting?
A: There are two. One is the balcony scene in Heat. I enjoyed my collaboration with Michael Mann. The other is the almost-suicide scene in Normal Life.
Q: Did you have a lot of competition to get the part of Val Kilmer's wife in Heat?
A: Michael Mann saw everybody in town. When I first went in I had just come back from working in Europe and taking an idyllic holiday in Portofino, Italy, by myself. So my consciousness was someplace else. I taped a scene for Michael and got myself hired based on that. I'd do anything for Michael Mann, anything. I would just pour myself out to him as an artist.
Q: Were you disappointed when your part was cut out of Natural Born Killers?
A: Not at all, because I learned what I learned. I did the work. That's what counts. I got to work with Oliver [Stone].
Q: You played Harvey Keitel's daughter in Smoke. Did you do much improvisation?
A: None. Paul Auster's screenplay had the little turns of humanity, of rage, of self-loathing, of debilitating grief. It was all in the lines. Solid scenes, extremely well written. All I had to do was fill it up with behavior. It didn't require any improvisation to get there.
Q: You've worked with legends like Pacino and De Niro, and with up-and-comers like Matthew McConaughey and Vince Vaughn. Can you compare the veterans with the newcomers?
A: It's very interesting to work with someone like Matthew or Vince--they're young to it and they're good. What they're doing is what the masters long ago perfected--they're just being themselves. That's why Matthew's performance A Time to Kill was so well received, and why Vince was so great in Swingers. They're on the right track. The guys who are evolved haven't evolved out of being themselves--they work with their currency, and your own expression is the most powerful currency you have.
Q: You said you didn't think your character in A Time to Kill was special.
A: It scared me for that reason. She didn't have the emotional volatility of a lot of the other characters that I've played. She is kind of the normal kid that I have come to realize my parents were when they were the age I was five years ago. This wasn't a person with a tremendous emotional dysfunction or any imperative mission. We make movies about extraordinary people, but she wasn't.
Q: You wound up living with Matthew McConaughey during filming--was this part of method acting?
A: No, it was about fun. It's not like we met, shook hands, and I moved in. We were seeing each other before we made A Time to Kill. The day I got there I went over to dinner with him and I never left until I had to go to L.A. to make Norma Jean and Marilyn.
Q: Are you still friends?
A: Oh yeah! Very good friends.
Q: How did it end between you?
A: It was two people who loved each other releasing each other. I realized that the woman Matthew ends up with forever is not going to be the woman with whom he went through this fantastic change. "Fantastic" meaning "related to fantasy." He was getting offers for extraordinary amounts of money before the movie was halfway finished. He couldn't help but know that there was going to be a very different landscape when he emerged from that movie.
Q: Last I heard you had split up with Michael Bolton. Can you talk about it or is it off limits because it's still too raw?
A: Off, but thank you for asking. In a way it's hard, because you love people and you think so much of them. I would love to go on, to talk about nothing but the men I love. But I'm not going to.
Q: Do you have a man you love now?
A: Yeah. Oh yeah. I'd say two. [Laughs]
Q: Your sister said she didn't worry about you professionally, but did worry that you were going to fall in love with every guy you acted with. Unfair comment?
A: Not unfair. I'm sure that's a valid concern to a lot of people on the outside.
Q: Why do you have this reputation for dating your costars?
A: Because people like you seem to put it out there. It's like this guy that I let carry me to my car the other night when I got mobbed--I was carrying my shoes in my hands, and this good-looking security guy asked if I wanted him to carry me to my car. What is that going to mean? That I have the reputation for getting so drunk I can't walk out of a bar? It's definitely not who I am. If anything, I'm a very straight drunk. If I get drunk you can't tell I'm drunk unless I decide to let you know I am.
Q: Do you ever get stoned?
A: I don't smoke. Never.
Q: What about cocaine?
A: Never. Never.
Q: You've said you studied articles in sociological journals about why people are interested in celebrities. What did you find out?
A: I was interested in why we elevate these people, the psychology of this adulation. But I didn't find out much. I experience it more firsthand. I choose to remain impervious. I feel a tug occasionally at trying to discourage people's inordinate attachment to what movie stars do. But I don't know that I can dismantle even one person's excessive and inappropriate and really just fundamentally impolite interest in what people like me do.
Q: What magazines do you read?
A: None.
Q: Do you remember the first time you saw Playboy magazine?
A: Why would you ask a question like that?
Q: Why not?
A: A stack of magazines under a bed rings a bell, but I couldn't tell you where. It's interesting because it's a maverick question. It's a curious thing to ask. And I'm very suspicious of Movieline magazine. They're very cutting and very spiteful. It's a very snitty, rumor-fueled magazine. I wonder what sorts of things they lead you to ask.
Q: They don't lead me to ask anything. They just like to have fun.
A: Oh yeah, a lot of fun ... at other people's expense. Whoooo! That's quality fun right there, friend!
Q: Back to your work. You played the young, pre-stardom Marilyn Monroe in the HBO movie Norma jean and Marilyn. You said about her, "Her life would have been unspeakably more tragic if she hadn't been famous.
A: And if she hadn't been physically beautiful, because that is such a commodity in this time and place. Then again, who is to say? If she had been ugly, she may have been forced to find a spiritual peace that she managed to dodge because she was constantly living with the transaction of her body.
Q: Your mother disapproved of your playing a nude scene in Norma Jean and Marilyn--how often do you have to deal with her disapproval?
A: Disapproved, approved, whatever. It disturbed her a little bit, but we're always going to upset our parents. That's part of our job as the next generation.
Q: Did your mother once take you to the UCLA Medical Center to hear about the effects that playing certain intense characters can have on actors' immune systems?
A: She's so full of shit. I happened to go with her and it's something I learned, so no big deal.
Q: And then you go on to play an extremely intense character in Kiss the Girls.
A: Actually, it was a moment of great vindication. On my birthday everyone was out here and Paramount let me screen Kiss the Girls. I had my friends, family, acting teacher. My mother asked him, "Do you think it's all justified what she puts herself through?" And he said, "Absolutely. Whatever it takes."
Q: Would you gain the weight De Niro did to play a part like Jake LaMotta?
A: Yeah, that part, that director, yes.
Q: You know what Olivier said about Dustin Hoffman after Hoffman ran for an hour to get his adrenaline pumping in Marathon Man? "Why doesn't the dear boy just act?!"
A: My response to that story is, When you're Olivier you have the right to say that to me, but you're not Olivier, so you don't have that right. Also, Olivier had his technique, God bless him, and Dustin Hoffman has his, and I have mine. And I'm with Dustin.
Q: What did you learn from Morgan Freeman?
A: It's so rich as to be almost beyond description and so basic as to be stupid sounding. It's also personal. Suffice to say, he is a hero. The gulf between how cool he is and the rest of the world is insurmountable. An abyss!
Q: In Kiss the Girls you play a psychologist who helps Morgan Freeman track down a man who kidnaps and kills women. What res¬onated for you in this character?
A: Her determination, power and deep emotional commitment. She is faith in action.
Q: Since Kiss the Girls is a suspense thriller with some frightening violence in it, what importance does this film have that mitigates the darker aspects of it?
A: I can't answer that. People just have to see for themselves how the final scene is the inevitable culmination of my character's story. After all the harrowing emotional crescendo, it is extremely gratifying.
Q: In Kiss the Girls you kickbox. How good are you?
A: Very good. My trainer used to have me stand under a tree and he'd tell me to kick a certain leaf.
Q: Would you like to have kicked the executives at Fine Line who sent Normal Life almost straight to video?
A: I had an incredible experience on that film. The woman who took over Fine Line [Ruth Vitale] didn't want to send a bratty stepchild to Harvard, which was what Normal Life was. She came in ready to revamp a company: out with the old, in with the new. She hadn't financed the movie, she hadn't approved the script, she didn't have anything to do with the casting of it, she didn't look at the dailies or get preliminary cuts sent to her. She got this incredibly powerful, disturbing film given to her when she wanted to make storybook quasi-Merchant Ivory movies. Normal Life got caught in her ideological crossfire. The thing that was cruddy was that she lied about the movie. She said it was set up to go to video. Excuse me, I do not actively seek out movies that are set up to go to video! What horse manure! I have a very fond spot for Siskel and Ebert, because they saw the movie and gave it an incredible review.
Q: You have a will and confidence about your career choices that must go back to your childhood. Did you really feel, as you've said, that you practically grew up in the back of a U-Haul truck?
A: We were a tight family, but there was something about the inconsistency of it all, the vagueness that would often come up in my experiences with my mother because she wasn't available to me due to financial hardship or emotional strain.
Q: Did you have any fears as a child?
A: No, [though] being powerless was a condition I endured quite a bit, so there may have been some fear accompanying that.
Q: You've said that Wynonna was born with clenched fists, whereas you were born with open hands. What does that mean?
A: She was at an age where she understood and felt the effects of divorce more than I did. I was so young I was basically immune to it. It shaped me, but not in the dramatic and angry ways that it would impact an eight-year-old.
Q: You were 14 when your mother and sister made their first album--what are your memories of that?
A: The music is a balm. Music is the greatest gift.
Q: And you didn't feel you had that gift at all?
A: Didn't have anything to do with whether or not I felt I had it, it had to do with where my interests were. I did my own thing. I read and was extremely independent. I liked to play by myself. Once I got active in school I had a comprehensive social network, so music wasn't interesting to me. I think I played the washboard in the second grade for fun. Never got much noise out of it--I didn't understand how it worked.
Q: Did your father ever tell you anything that stuck with you?
A: There were some things he only said once, and that's what I'll always remember him for. One was with regard to the power that women have with men. I was 17. He said, "Go easy on the boys, you've got something we don't." He was talking about the power to carry a life in your womb. Then there was something else he said when I was 17. He told me that at that age I was already smarter and more sophisticated than he would ever be. That's not necessarily true, [but] I understand the esteem and regard that he had for me.
Q: What major revelations did you go through when you turned 16 and 18?
A: What I experienced about myself at 16 was that I'm very gritty. That I'm extremely ambitious and very hardworking. I don't mind striving to attain the things about which I dreamed. At 18, I went to college and it was the perfect environment for me. It was someplace beautiful and consistent. I really flourished. To a certain extent I had always been afraid to work as hard as I knew I could, because I had always been told that I was gifted and special. If I had to work hard at something, it meant that I wasn't already good at it. If I wasn't good at it, I wasn't special.
Q: After college, you went to L.A. and became a hostess at the Industry-heavy restaurant, the Ivy?
A: Yes, for about a year. I was also going to a fantastic acting school at Playhouse West. I had fun at the Ivy just being a kid. I enjoyed every minute of it.
Q: Did you make any Industry connections?
A: Yeah, I got to be friends with a lot of people because they were good customers. Every now and then we have a laugh about my escorting them to table five.
Q: You appeared in Picnic on Broadway. Did being on Broadway mean to you what it means to a lot of New York actors?
A: Yeah, but you're still a bit of a foreigner. It's like not being French and going to Paris to eat at a fancy restaurant. I speak the language, I'm a bit of a connoisseur, but it's not going to blow my mind on a genetic level the way it would a French woman. So was I elated and esteemed? Yes. But I wasn't raised in the theater.
Q: Weren't you offered a larger role in the movie Kuffs than the one you ended up with, if you were willing to do nudity?
A: I wasn't offered the part. It was my first audition. There were two other women and I thought they were boiling it down to a booby factor--choosing a pair of breasts. I was counseled by my agent not to do it.
Q: You've had the same agent since you came to Hollywood--how much do you trust her counsel?
A: She is my advocate. She doesn't give a rat's ass about anybody else. That feels good, especially where you're the younger of two and you come from a family where there's a tremendously charismatic dynamic constantly in motion. To have somebody who is just yours. Everybody needs a figure like that.
Q: Do you have scripts or books you want to do?
A: Absolutely We've been extremely conservative letting people use my name or go out to writers, directors, costars, but I've found stuff I feel very confident about. What I'm looking for is what my character has to say. Is there value in it? Do I respond to the woman? I just read Ang Lee's new script--it's gorgeous, but I didn't respond to the woman. If he still would like to meet me, I would be insane with joy to meet him, but maybe we should wait until he's done making this movie, because it's a waste of our time right now because I'm not interested in embodying that girl.
Q: Would you also like to direct?
A: You bet. No doubt about it. I'd say next year. Definitely. For some of us it's a very natural evolution. I like responsibility, I like being comprehensive. I have both diffused awareness and problem-solving capacities, and it's just the vortex for a person like me. It's such a great repository for all of one's resources, energies, talents, abilities. I can't wait.
Q: Would you like to follow the path of Jodie Foster?
A: I've never met Jodie Foster. She's extremely admirable. [But] I don't look at other people, because I have to go to bed and wake up with me.
Q: What makes Jennifer Jason Leigh the best actress of your generation, as you've described her?
A: She doesn't fumble around wondering. She seems completely pledged to using herself.
Q: Who else do you admire?
A: I love Vanessa Redgrave. She is such an open vessel through which it passes. And I love Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange, Judy Davis, Joan Allen.
Q: What about men?
A: Bob, Al, Val.
Q: The Heat trio.
A: I'm not very oriented towards men. Growing up in a very feminine-centric family, my concept of art is much more easily touched by what women do. [But] I think Ed Harris is a very good actor. Nicolas Cage always makes me laugh. I think that Val and I should definitely work together again. I'm over the moon about Gene Hackman. I would love to do something with Mr. Duvall.
Q: So far with your career, any regrets?
A: Zero. No regrets. Proud of everything.
Q: What are your favorite books and writers?
A: Always Edith Wharton and Steinbeck. Then C.S. Lewis. I'm reading The Screwtape Letters. I'm reading Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One, which is a very funny book. I'm reading Steve Martin's plays. I just read two books by an Irish writer named Colum McCann, Songdogs, his novel, and_ Fishing the Sloe-Black River_, his collection of stories. I'm also finishing a book called Mystic in the Theater: Eleonora Duse. [Gets up and goes from the patio to the living room and brings back Stephen Mitchell's The Gospel According to Jesus.] This is the book. Stephen Mitchell is a scholar and a translator of the Tao Te Ching and the Book of Job. What he did here was resume Thomas Jefferson's work in taking all the translations of the gospels and putting them side-by-side and using the spiritual sense of discernment to distill it all down to the essential teachings of Jesus. [This version of the gospel stresses] that forgiveness is not an action, it is a state of mind. You can't galvanize yourself into forgiving someone because you extract it from your morality. You do it because you have a vision.
Q: Isn't that giving a selfishness to the act of forgiving?
A: Oh, but that's the continuation of the most beautiful, complicated, ambiguous--and yet right--yin and yang, the micro and the macro. If I am going to have a sense of nonattachment about what you do, then I don't care what you do because you do have to be accountable to me and to other humans. At first Buddhism seems so easy, and then you get into stuff like that and you realize why it takes 40 years. If.
Q: Wow, we jumped from Christ to Buddha. Let's stay Western. I gather you read the Bible.
A: I don't go anywhere without it, but I can't say I read it every day. I have little devotional books that I look at every day. The Psalms are a bit like haiku. It is clean, but it is very deep and very poetic. "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; there shall thy hand lead me." Psalm 139. It's fabulous.
Q: Let's get back to you. How many times have you skydived and bungee-jumped?
A: Bungee-jumped once, skydived twice.
Q: When do you chew tobacco?
A: Whenever I want. Sometimes three times a day, sometimes not for a month.
Q: Isn't that kind of disgusting? Where do you spit?
A: In a Cinderella cup from Disneyland.
Q: How long have you been chewing?
A: A year and a half.
Q: Do you smoke cigars?
A: Not so much anymore, since I started to chew.
Q: I understand that you often fast.
A: I did that twice last year and I won't do it again for quite a while.
Q: What do you most dislike about your appearance?
A: Right now I have a freckle I'm bleaching.
Q: How do you make soap?
A: Lard and lye. Gets hot in a pot, stir it carefully making sure not to touch it because the lye hasn't gone through the chemical change rendering it innocuous. Then you pour it into plastic Tupperware, cover it with a cheese cloth or a little calico, and put it on the floor in the corner. Eventually when it firms up, remove the cloth and cut it into bars.
Q: What question would make you want to stop doing this interview?
A: Some stupid question about the future which necessitates my being prescient.
Q: So where do you think you'll be 10 years from now?
A: [Laughs]
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Harrison Ford for the July '97 issue of Movieline.