Ashley Judd began life on the move, literally.  She attended 12 schools in 13 years, living, by times, in dirt poor Kentucky back-woods surroundings with her single mother and half-sister.  She turned to reading and the rest of her family, Naomi and Wynonna Judd, turned to singing. They rocketed to fame as the country duo, The Judds, and little sister Ashley was afforded the chance to attended the University of Kentucky, from which she graduated with honours in 1990. 

Judd, then, on her singer-sister’s advice, went directly to Los Angeles at age 23, where her impressive self-assurance got her an immediate agency contract.  She netted a movie part at her first audition, in Kuffs (1992).  Her refusal to do a nude scene for that film didn’t hurt her career at all -- she went on to the title role in Ruby in Paradise (1993), for which she received a New York Film Critics’ Circle award for Best Actress and a Sundance Film Festival Independent Spirit award.  In the meantime, she accepted recurring roles in the quality television shows Star Trek: The Next Generation (episodes 102 and 106, 1991), and Sisters (1991 - 1994), and a part in the TV movie ‘Til Death Do Us Part (1992). 

Judd’s next performance, in the movie Natural Born Killers (1994), was too good -- it was cut for being “too intense” for a general audience. Judd, as the only character left alive in the scene, was the sole reason for that intensity.  Further quality films followed for the actor, deemed an “intellectual pin-up”: Smoke (1995), Heat (1995), The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995), A Time To Kill (1996), and Normal Life (1996).  She received both an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in TV’s Norma Jean and Marilyn. 

Judd’s star status has been since cemented with Kiss The Girls (1997), The Locusts (1997), Simon Birch (1998), Double Jeopardy (1999), and Eye of the Beholder (2000). 

The popular actor shuns the celebrity side of stardom for her confessed  “...fear of fans and fear of intrusiveness...”  A stalker incident in September, 1999, further reinforced those fears.  Scary or not, though, her fan base continues to grow with each role, and includes not only audiences, but critics and industry peers as well.  Coming up for the actor are the movies Dexterity, Where The Heart Is, Animal Husbandry and The Notebook.  Judd’s inherited beauty, brains and talent, and her own unique rural-urban sophistication have taken this rags-to-riches fairy-tale heroine to the heights of the acting profession.  She’s poised for Hollywood greatness.