Careful, confident choices working well for Ashley Judd

What's most impressive about Ashley Judd, as she settles into a dining room chair in her press suite at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, is her look.

Not her looks. Her look. Something in her eyes that is direct, clear and appraising. Something that asks, "What do you want to know?"

It is a look of supreme confidence, tinged, perhaps, with a slight impatience. And as polite as she is - she steeps a cup of green tea for her interviewer, carefully describing the characteristics of this particular "gunpowder" tea - she is also a busy, focused woman who clearly doesn't suffer fools gladly.

After a couple of background questions about her mother and sister, Naomi and Wynonna Judd, the country-singing duo whose tour bus young Ashley used to clean, she sighs, resignedly: "Oh, you really are asking those questions ..."

At 36, Judd is her own woman. Her famous family got there first, and she launched her acting career (with the TV show "Sisters") in 1991, the same year the Judds gave their farewell concert. But now Ashley is the star of the family, and at the Ritz she is getting the full star treatment: Handlers scurry through the halls and talk on cell phones, fresh-cut fruit and flowers are laid on tables, and members of the press are kept in a small waiting room of a suite that has been booked just for interviews (Judd is staying in another suite).

When she arrives, dressed in a Tennessee-meets-Hollywood, fringed blue blouse and dark slacks, all other activity is shut out.

Judd hasn't yet had a career-defining star turn, but quietly she has built a strong fan base with an impressive, diverse catalog of films that bodes well for a long career. She started in independent films such as "Ruby in Paradise," "Smoke" and "Heat," then went Hollywood in a string of thrillers such as "A Time To Kill," "Kiss the Girls" and "Double Jeopardy," and has more recently found a happy medium between art and commerce with a starring role in "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and a small but notable role in "Frida."

Now she's in theaters with "De-Lovely," in which she plays the strong, smart and loyal wife of gay songwriter Cole Porter (Kevin Kline).

The role of Linda Porter was, she says, "Very easy and natural." Even though the character was born more than 100 years ago, Judd liked her, in part because "she was ahead of her time because of her independence. She moved to Europe before the first World War, she had left her husband and lived on her own for seven years before she met Cole."

Looking back at Judd's choice of roles, she has always chosen strong, individual women, even in fairly cookie-cutter thrillers such as 1997's "Kiss the Girls." It is this, in part, that has led to her notable popularity with women.

"That's a little special point of pride to me, that women like me so much," she says. "It's ... whatever ... to be liked by guys. But to have women like me, that's good."

Does her clear intelligence - smart woman, smart choices - contribute to that?

"I think I'm competent more than I am smart," she says. "And a lot of women are competent, they can take care of the house, they can have a relationship, they know how to nurture that, know how to be a good friend, know when to push, when to listen."

She says that the trend toward female characters that are trotted out for their looks alone "makes me crazy," and that the only way she'd do a "bimbo" role is if the movie was "unequivocally satirical, if |Alexander Payne ("Citizen Ruth," "Election") directed it."

In fact, Judd read for the title role of "Citizen Ruth" and was disappointed when she didn't get it (Laura Dern did the role brilliantly). But she made up for the loss with her turn as the younger Vivi Walker in "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," which sounds like her favorite role so far.

"I'm really proud of that performance, I couldn't have done better at that point in my career," she says. "It was a great experience. It was a real privilege to do that film."

A lesser but telling privilege is one she has just exercised before the interview: She has just bought at auction (by phone) a clock that belonged to the late Katharine Hepburn. Is having a belonging of perhaps film's greatest actress her way of getting a piece of the magic?

"There are certain women I've admired, and would like to emulate," she admits. "But the only thing I've ever aimed for is to be myself ... but more so."

Part of that, she says, is in her choices of political activity, which often reflect her priorities as a feminist.

In fact, she says that her participation in April's reproductive rights march in Washington, D.C., where she spoke to the crowd and invoked the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was "a glorious experience ... a peak experience."

And her recent trip to Southeast Asia to promote AIDS awareness, undertaken after this interview, showed another side of her public-minded activism.

Still, she says, keeping all of these activities in the right balance with her personal life (including her marriage to race-car driver Dario Franchitti) requires careful management. She is matter-of-fact about this.

"I have my priorities, and I'm comfortable with them," she says. "My understanding of how to 'have it all' is to be comfortable with the choices and the sacrifices I make, based on my priorities.

"For example, we live in Tennessee, and I could stay here on the West Coast for a few more days, because if I don't see directors A, B and C, I won't get roles. But if I stay, I won't see my husband for a few days, and that goes against my priorities."

Still, being a gracious host is clearly one of her priorities as well, and as one of her handlers pokes her head into the room to call an end to the interview, Judd has a final, gracious question of her own. "How was your tea?" she asks. Satisfied with the answer, she leaves the room for another interview.

Sacremento Bee 07/2004
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