Ashley Judd (born April 19, 1968) is a Golden Globe-nominated American actress, well known for playing a number of strong women characters in films such as Ruby in Paradise, Kiss the Girls, Double Jeopardy and High Crimes.

Early life

Judd was born Ashley Tyler Ciminella in Granada Hills, California, the daughter of Naomi Judd, a well known country music singer and motivational speaker, and Michael Ciminella, Jr., a marketing analyst for the horseracing industry. Judd has a half-sister, Wynonna Judd, who is also a country music singer. At the time of her birth, her mother was working as a nurse, and did not become well-known as a singer, along with her daughter, until the early 1980s. Judd's parents divorced in 1972, and in 1974, her mother took her back to her own native Kentucky, where Judd grew up.

Judd attended twelve schools before college, including the Sayre School in Lexington, Kentucky and Franklin High School in Tennessee. She briefly tried modeling in Japan during school breaks. An alumna of the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of Kentucky, she majored in French and minored in anthropology, art history, theater and women's studies. She spent a semester studying in France as part of her major, a move that mirrored her role as Reed in the television series Sisters. She was in the UK Honors Program and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, but did not graduate with her class, leaving the university early to drive cross-country in pursuit of an acting career in Hollywood, where she studied with well-respected acting teacher, Robert Carnegie, at Playhouse West. During this time, she worked as a waitress at The Ivy restaurant and lived in a Malibu, California house her sister bought her Fact: date=March 2009, which burned down during the great Malibu fires Fact: date=March 2009. On May 9, 2007, it was announced that Judd had completed her bachelor's degree in French from the University of Kentucky. In a May 2007 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Judd explained that she had completed her degree requirements in 1990, but had mistakenly thought she was one class short. She only needed to "sign a piece of paper" in order to graduate. DeGeneres then surprised Judd by presenting her with her diploma, which DeGeneres had acquired from the university.

Career

Judd began acting on television and appeared as Ensign Robin Lefler, a Starfleet officer, in two 1991 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. From 1991 to 1994, she had a recurring role as Reed, the daughter of Alex (Swoosie Kurtz), on the NBC drama Sisters. She made her feature film debut with a very small role in 1992's Kuffs. However, in 1993 Judd fought for and was cast in her first starring role playing the title character in Victor Nuñez's Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize Winning, Ruby in Paradise. She received rave reviews playing Ruby Lee Gissing, a young woman trying to make a new life for herself, and it was this performance that would launch her career as an actress. Oliver Stone, who had seen her in Nuñez's film, cast Judd in Natural Born Killers, but her scenes were later cut from the version of the film released theatrically. But the following year she gained further critical acclaim for her role as Harvey Keitel's estranged daughter in Wayne Wang's Smoke and also as Val Kilmer's lover in Michael Mann's Heat. That same year she also played the role of Callie in Philip Ridley's dark, adult fairy tale, The Passion of Darkly Noon.