Judd for the defence: Actress puts career on hold to help world's poor

No good deed performed by a celebrity goes unpunished.

Bono gets laughed at. Angelina Jolie gets vilified no matter how many orphans she adopts. Even the UN boss chuckles about Brad Pitt becoming a goodwill ambassador.

So whenever an actor talks about causes and charitable work, we're hardwired, even if we don't like to admit it, to roll our eyes. And maybe sometimes, at some people, we should.

Ashley Judd is not one of those people.

When the 37-year-old actress talks about mothballing her film career to concentrate on international humanitarian missions, it comes across as neither a bluff nor a bid for attention.

ARTICULATE

Speaking to the Sun, she's articulate, talks with conviction and admittedly scared by the changes she's making to her life.

Describing her feelings about Hollywood, she says, "Apathetic is a strong word, but if I have to be apathetic about that so I can care about the fact a billion people survive on less than a dollar a day, then so be it. The latter is far more important to me than the former."

Judd, a social activist since her time as a student at the University of Kentucky, has toured such countries as Cambodia, South Africa, Kenya, Thailand and Madagascar, educating young women about HIV and AIDS. Last year she testified before the U.S. Congress about the issue and, after she's done promoting her latest drama at the Sundance Film Festival, she is bound for Central America.

"That's where my heart is now ... I'm not saying it's not scary, the choice I'm making. I'm changing everything about who I was when my husband and I met," says Judd, who married auto racer Dario Franchitti in 2001. "So I'm saying to him, 'I'm going to change.' It's a big deal."

Not quite as big -- but important to Judd nonetheless -- is supporting Come Early Morning, which is generating some of the best reviews of her career for her performance as a thirtysomething woman struggling to find a sense of self-worth and lasting love.

Judd is a prodigal daughter at Sundance, since it was the festival that helped launch her acting career when it awarded Ruby in Paradise the Grand Jury Prize in 1993.

And it was at last year's Sundance when Judd's agent was approached with the script, written by Joey Lauren Adams, best known as Ben Affleck's bisexual leading lady in Chasing Amy. Adams, frustrated by her career, had written Come Early Morning with the intention of directing it herself.

The screenplay wound up on a stack of scripts in Judd's home.

"It was very clear by the top of the second page that it was a beautifully written script. It was extremely precise and still very poetic. So much out there was crap compared to her writing."

JOSTLING

Sundance, of course, is as much a market as a festival, with distributors jostling for product they deem commercial. But Judd says she isn't thinking about the movie's chances at mainstream success.

"That's a recipe for pain ... I love the little house I rented during filming, I loved seeing Joey shine, I loved seeing the department heads working so hard for her. I'm completely satisfied. Whatever happens, happens."

She expresses similar "compassionate detachment" about the prospect of making her own movies.

"I don't care enough," says Judd, who also shot the low-budget black comedy Bugs.

As of now, she says she doesn't know what her next acting project will be.

Nor does Judd see herself starting a family. "I find it unconscionable to breed," she says, citing the number of children who starve to death in impoverished Third World countries.

"I know it's a very strong opinion a lot of people won't agree with and that's not to say someday I might not feel a different impulse. But I've felt that way since college."

SOURCE: OttawaSun.com - 01/2006

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