Judd was born in 1968 in Granada Hills, Los Angeles. Her parents are Naomi Judd, who later became a country music singer and motivational speaker, and Michael Charles Ciminella, a marketing analyst for the horse racing industry. Ashley's elder half-sister, Wynonna Judd, is also a country music singer.
Ashley Judd (born Ashley Tyler Ciminella; April 19, 1968) is an American actress. She grew up in a family of performing artists, the daughter of country music singer Naomi Judd and the half-sister of country music singer Wynonna Judd. Her acting career has spanned more than three decades, and she has become heavily involved in global humanitarian efforts and political activism.
When Judd was born, her mother was a homemaker (Naomi did not achieve fame as a singer until the early 1980s). Judd's parents divorced in 1972 when she was four. The following year, Judd's mother Naomi returned with Ashley to Kentucky, where Judd lived for most of her childhood.
Starting in 1991, Judd appeared as Ensign Robin Lefler, a Starfleet officer, in two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Darmok" and "The Game". 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 small role in 1992's Kuffs. In 1993, she was cast in her first starring role playing the title character in Victor Nuñez's Ruby in Paradise. This won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. Believing that this role would shape the rest of her career, Judd was extremely nervous before the audition, nearly getting into a car accident en route. "From the first three sentences, I knew it was written for me", she told the San Jose Mercury News. She received rave reviews in her role as Ruby Lee Gissing, a young woman trying to make a new life for herself.
In 1996, she co-starred with Mira Sorvino as Marilyn Monroe in Norma Jean and Marilyn, where she recreated the photo shoot for the centerfold for the first issue of Playboy. The same year she had a supporting role in the thriller film A Time to Kill. It received positive reviews and was a major box office success. By the end of the 1990s, Judd had achieved considerable success as a leading actress, having lead roles in additional thrillers that performed well at the box office, including Kiss the Girls (1997) and Double Jeopardy (1999).
In December 1999, Judd became engaged to Dario Franchitti, a Scottish racing driver who competed in Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). They married in December 2001 at Skibo Castle in Scotland. They had no children together, as she is known to have said: "It's unconscionable to breed with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries." They divorced in 2013.
In the early 2000s she starred in Where the Heart Is (2000), Someone Like You (2001), and High Crimes (2002). These were moderate box office successes. Her film Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) performed well. In 2002 she acted in the critically acclaimed film Frida.
In 2004 she received praise and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, for her performance in De-Lovely, opposite Kevin Kline, who played Cole Porter. She also starred in Twisted (2004). This was widely panned.
Starting in 2004, Judd was the advertising "face" of American Beauty, an Estée Lauder cosmetic brand sold at Kohl's department stores, and of H. Stern jewelers. In June 2007, Goody's Family Clothing launched three fashion clothing lines with Judd in the fall to be called "AJ", "Love Ashley", and "Ashley Judd". In 2008 they added an "Ashley Judd Plus" line.
In February 2006, she entered a program at Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap, Texas and stayed for 47 days. She was there for treatment of depression, insomnia, and codependency.
She was appointed Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, an education and prevention program of the international NGO Population Services International (PSI), promoting AIDS prevention and treatment. Judd was honored November 10, 2009, as the recipient of the fourth annual USA Today Hollywood Hero, awarded for her work with PSI. On October 29, 2006, Judd appeared at a "Women for Ford" event for Democratic Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. She has also campaigned extensively both locally and nationally for a variety of Democratic candidates, including President Barack Obama in critical swing states.
By May 2007, Judd had completed a BA at the University of Kentucky. She was awarded an Honorary DHL degree from Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky, on May 9, 2009. Judd undertook postgraduate study, earning a mid-career MPA degree from Harvard Kennedy School in 2010.
In 2008, Judd supported Barack Obama's presidential campaign. In 2009, she appeared in a one-minute video advertisement for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, in which Judd condemned Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for supporting aerial wolf hunting. In response, Palin stated the reason these wolves are killed is to protect the caribou population in Alaska. Palin called the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund an "extreme fringe group". In 2010, Judd signed the Animal Legal Defense Fund's petition to urge Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear to protect that state's homeless animals through tough enforcement of Kentucky's Humane Shelter Law.
In 2010, Judd was Janet Tamaro's original choice for the role of Detective Jane Rizzoli in the TV series Rizzoli & Isles but she declined. Angie Harmon took the role. In 2011, Judd co-starred with Patrick Dempsey in the film Flypaper. In 2012, she starred as Rebecca Winstone on the ABC series Missing. In 2014, she appeared as Natalie Prior in Divergent, which she reprised in the 2015 sequel Insurgent.
On September 8, 2010, CNN interviewed Judd about her second humanitarian mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Judd traveled with the Enough Project, a project to end genocide and crimes against humanity. In the interview, Judd discussed her efforts to raise awareness about how conflict minerals fuel sexual violence in Congo. During her trip, Judd visited hospitals for victims of sexual violence, camps for displaced persons, mines, and civil society organizations. On September 30, 2010, CNN published an op-ed titled "Ashley Judd: Electronics fuel unspeakable violence" by Judd and Enough Project co-founder John Prendergast regarding the continued violence in Congo. On November 26, 2010, she published a subsequent op-ed, "Costs of Convenience", excerpted from her trip diary from eastern Congo. These pieces discussed the recent provision in the Dodd-Frank Reform bill that requires companies to prove where their minerals originated, and the link between modern electronics (which rely on those minerals) and mining camps plagued by such violence.
In 2011, Judd released her memoir All That is Bitter and Sweet, in which she discusses her life from adolescence to adulthood. The memoir concentrates on her humanitarian work as an adult.
In 2011, she joined the Leadership Council of the International Center for Research on Women. Other organizations Judd has been involved with include Women for Women International and Equality Now. She is a member of the advisory board for Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an organization fighting sex-trafficking and inter-generational prostitution in India. Judd is active on the speakers' circuit, giving speeches about gender equality, abuse and humanitarian topics.
In February 2013, she invited her Twitter followers to join a mailing list, hinting that she might ultimately announce a run for the Senate to those on the list. However, she announced on March 27, 2013, that she would not run, citing her need to be focused on her family. Judd later endorsed Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.
In 2014, Judd was the narrator of the documentary film about Turkish preacher Fethullah Gülen, Love Is a Verb, directed by Terry Spencer Hesser. The following year she became the first woman to narrate the opening for the telecast of the Kentucky Derby.
Judd represented Tennessee as a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She also considered returning to Kentucky and challenging Senator Mitch McConnell in 2014. In response, the conservative Super PAC American Crossroads released an attack ad against Judd in Kentucky.
In October 2015, Judd told Variety that she had been sexually harassed by a studio mogul but did not name the person. In October 2017, she said the person was Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax, and said that the sexual harassment occurred during the filming of Kiss the Girls.
Judd has conducted humanitarian work that focuses on gender equality, pro abortion causes and the rights of women and girls. In 2016, she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNFPA, the United Nations agency with responsibilities including sexual and reproductive health. As of May 2018, she had visited UNFPA's projects for women and girls affected by humanitarian crises in Jordan, Turkey, Ukraine, and Bangladesh, and its development work in India and Sri Lanka.
On July 26, 2016, Judd attended a Creative Coalition luncheon in support of DC Statehood that took place during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The event, hosted by Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, also included actors Elizabeth Banks, Tim Daly, Josh Gad, William Baldwin, and David Schwimmer.
In August 2016, Judd enrolled at UC Berkeley to pursue a PhD in Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy. She took a medical leave of absence two months later because she was suffering from siege migraines.
On April 30, 2018, Judd filed a defamation and sexual harassment lawsuit against Weinstein, stating that he hurt her career by spreading lies about her after she rejected his sexual advances. Weinstein filed a motion to dismiss in July. In January 2019, a federal judge in California dismissed Judd's claim of sexual harassment against Weinstein but allowed Judd to pursue her defamation claim that Weinstein sabotaged her career.
At the Women in the World summit in April 2019, Judd addressed Georgia's six-week abortion ban, which had been passed in March 2019. She said that she had been raped three times, and became pregnant once. She said, "As everyone knows, and I'm very open about it, I'm a three-time rape survivor. One of the times that I was raped there was conception and I'm very thankful I was able to access safe and legal abortion. Because the rapist, who is a Kentuckian, as am I, and I reside in Tennessee, has paternity rights in Kentucky and Tennessee, I would've had to co-parent with my rapist."
In January 2020, Judd endorsed Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in her run for the presidency.
In February 2021, while hiking in the jungle in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Judd shattered her leg. Porters transported her for 55 hours to reach a hospital for surgery in South Africa.