Ashley's Interview

INGRID SISCHY: I want to start the Interview with what I noticed about you during the photo shoot that we did for todays's story.

ASHLEY JUDD: I'm an exhibitionist. [laughs]

IS: No, actually, the opposite.

AJ: I will remember that day for the rest of my life. I wish I'd had a third eye, so I could have seen what was going on all of the time from the outside.

IS: Since I was on the other side of the camera, I got to watch you all day. And with your statement that you wish you'd had a third eye, you've just hit the point I want to make: I am really struck by how aware you seem to be of other people, how curious, and how genuinely interested you are in them and in all kinds of things.

AJ: Thank you. That is a lovely compliment and it is deeply felt. And the first thing I do is bounce it back to my mother [Naomi Judd, the country singer], because she always encouraged my sister [singer Wynonna] and me to have a genuine interest in other people. My mother has said that she is proud of me, not because I can act, but because I know how to act, as in how to behave. She will appreciate your statement.

IS: Was there a father around when you were growing up?

AJ: Sporadically. I was at an advantage that came from a seeming disadvantage. While I was rather bounced around on the occasions when mother couldn't really keep me with her, sometimes I ended up living with Daddy. It served me very well because I had a touchstone and a base with him that is the foundation for my relationship with him as a grown-up. And I've also had granddaddies for whom I have the most inordinate affection. We spent our summers with our grandparents in Kentucky. They were such a blessing. Who knows what I would be if I did not have my grandparents. Our mother loves us beyond love, and she worked her butt off at raising us well. But the contribution of both sets of grandparents is rock solid. My sister and I can sit around and talk for months about every nuance of Mamaw and Papaw [Ciminella]'s house, every nuance of Nana and Papaw Judd's house. People have poked fun at me before for the way I talk with all my heart about my grandparents. They have no idea what they're getting into when they blow off about that.

IS: Tell me about the effect of being bounced around.

AJ: Someone could lament, "Oh my gosh. This girl went to twelve schools in thirteen years," but I don't. Somebody once asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said, "Me, but more so." And by that, I meant that I wanted to continue to have the variety in my adult life that I was privileged to have as a child. I happened to have been born in Los Angeles and I have accrued the most time in Kentucky. My family has made its home in Tennessee since 1979, and we also did a couple of years in Marin County [California]. There's a marvelous synchronicity in my life despite having moved around a lot. In the end, I graduated from the same high school in eastern Kentucky to which my mother and aunt and uncle went. I really believe that I'm designed to be an actor with the immutable facts of this lifestyle - it seems as though what could potentially have been a hardship has actually been sugarcoated for me because of all my experiences.

IS: Can you trace back to when you knew you wanted to act?

AJ: I always had an imaginary life. I had fairies and built houses for them. And when I was in third or fourth grade, going to school in Marin, I remember walking across a field after school to I think it was a yoga class, if you can believe that, and -

IS: A yoga class in third or fourth grade?

AJ: That's Marin for you. Anyway, I remember wanting to look at the world and experience things like the girl in the book that I was reading at the time did. I don't remember the title of it, I just remember that she was in a rather extraordinary circumstance, and I wanted to receive the world the way she would have. I'd look at a bush and wonder, How would she feel when she looked at that bush?

IS: So you had begun your life as an actress?

AJ: It wasn't like a stage play or fluttering around the room saying, "Look at me, I'm going to perform for you." For the most part it wasn't about "presentation."

IS: It's Interesting that you say that because when I watch you act, I'm impressed that it's not "showy." There's always a sense of some strong internal understanding of the characters that you're playing. But keep going with how you got to today. Were you trouble in school?

AJ: I would say for one or two years of high school I was on the verge of getting into some trouble, or going in the wrong direction. It happens when you get hormonal and crazy. I didn't, at times, have a lot of supervision, and it's good that I ended up being so protected despite some of my actions.

IS: College?

AJ: I went to the University of Kentucky - I didn't get in anyplace else. It was the best thing for me. I would've gotten lost elsewhere. I wasn't solid enough. At UK I learned a lot about my own strength and self-reliance. Instead of simply reacting to curve balls, I was throwing some really nice pitches.

IS: Were you talking out loud about wanting to be an actor?

AJ: It was never something that you stated out loud. Wanting to be an actor was embarrassing, unlike being a nurse or a fireman or something. There's no sanctioned definition of acting. What comprises it is mysterious. What it takes is elusive to define. I knew I had all this stuff inside me, all these urges and impulses, and this love for it. On the outside, being an actor appears to be something really different from what I felt it was internally, and up until I actually busted the big move to California, I was waxy that acting consisted of having your picture taken in front of a good restaurant in Los Angeles.

IS: [laughs] It does seem to be about that a lot of times, though, doesn't it?

AJ: It sure the heck does - which may be why a lot of people turn to other outlets like writing and directing, because they're another exercise of expression.

IS: Do you think your mother expected you to become an actress?

AJ: We were always told that we were special and different, and kids who are told they're special and different can become physicists or botanists or anything. Being told one is special tends to breed a sense of potential for extraordinary and rare achievements. We're all pretty acquainted with the odds against actually making it in show business, but the constant benediction made it seem like it was the naturally ordained path.

IS: Were they disappointed that you didn't become a singer?

AJ: Music became a part of our lives when I was so young, that if I'd been interested in it, I probably would've exhibited that inclination at four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old. I never did. And I don't think anyone, especially after having heard my voice, would be remotely disappointed that I didn't become a singer. [both laugh]

IS: I remember the excitement that our executive editor, Graham Fuller, expressed when he came from the Sundance Film Festival in January 1993. He'd seen you in Ruby in Paradise and said we had to rush to tell everyone about you. In fact, I believe we were the first ones to do a big piece on you, weren't we?

AJ: Yes ma'am.

IS: Was it a hard journey to get such a part - one that really allowed you to show at least something of what you've got inside you?

AJ: It happened exactly the way it should have happened. I had just enough acting-class experience to know how to approach material in an open, heartfelt, natural, real, moment-to-moment way. And I had just enough auditioning experience and a few little jobs under my belt to make me professionally aware. I felt gripped inside by the script of Ruby in Paradise from the opening paragraph. I thought, This is it. This is for me. This is everything I have been waiting for since the third grade. Here is the story, here is the girl. It could not have been a more perfect piece of material for me to make my debut in.

IS: In A Time to Kill, for which we're doing our cover story on you and Matthew, he has a huge part and yours is modest. But it's a pivotal role, nonetheless. You're the Southern wife. Watching what you did with your moments onscreen, again I was struck by your depth. You don't go for the cheap tricks. In the film, you maintain the truth of human beings, which is exactly that - we're human. There is a moment when your character takes off with kid - because of what's going on due to her husband's decision to defend a black man - which particularly Impressed me. I found myself sitting there wondering if she was on the right side, or selfish, or resentful, or some combination. And, of course, all that's part of the story of race, of politics, of personal protection, of fear, of ignorance, et cetera. But the fact that you carried it all so convincingly, without needing to signal "the answer" to the audience, was noticeable. Of course, it has to do with the intelligence of the director, Joel Schumacher, as well. But if you couldn't pull it off, we wouldn't be seeing it. When I talked to Joel after seeing the movie, I congratulated him on the way he embodied all the complexity that the story involved. Sure there are people who are obviously so bad - they're evil, no question. But then there are also characters who have many dimensions, and who have to learn about all sorts of things, including the full meaning of consequence and the full meaning of people being equal.

With black churches being burned in the South yet again, it's clear that the hate that the film depicts is not a tragedy of the past, by any means. Nor, of course, is racism exclusive to the South. But I'm interested in your experiences growing up when and where you did.

AJ: I have some suspicions about a distant relation or two in my family who will remain unnamed. And during a board-of-trustees meeting at my college, a prominent and dearly beloved Kentuckian said the word "nigger." Hello, hello - that is not acceptable. At the meeting there happened to be a reporter from the university's newspaper, and he printed it. I was like, "This is definitely not O.K." I ended up organizing a campus-wide walkout. I went to a couple of meetings that the African-American students held to talk about what had happened, and we teamed up and there was a walkout of classes in protest of the administration not requiring [this board member's] resignation. I'm very glad I did it. I was a sorority girl and I was friends with the man's granddaughter. Some of my sorority sisters were looking at me like I had aliens living with me in my room. They just couldn't believe what I was doing. But what had occurred was just not acceptable to me.

IS : Is the subject of the film part of what attracted you to it?

AJ: I was attracted to the intensity of the drama. And I was also desirous of working with Joel. It wasn't a huge part, but I really wanted to start the relationship, and I want to work with him again. It was a really fantastic moviemaking experience. There was a lot of decency and kindness and consideration going around. On top of it, there was the most fabulous homemade food. Sisters from a local church baked for the movie. Every morning there were cinnamon rolls and these little cream-cheese rolls, and in the afternoon there was everything from homemade black-walnut fudge with marshmallows to the most delicious vanilla cupcakes, homemade blueberry pies with a crust on top spelling out the initials T.T.K.

Interview Magazine - 08/1996

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