Here I'll include Ashley's interviews on movies, roles, fame, religion, her romantic life and more. 
Double Jeopardy
Is this a smart movie? Do you think there's a real possibility that a wife could be convicted of killing her husband when there's no body? And is there really no way she could be prosecuted if she did, indeed, kill her rat-fink of a husband after serving time for his murder already?
Smart? Yes. Is it plausible? As for double jeopardy, [in real life] that could be overlooked: I could be charged with violating my probation or violating his civil rights, if I did kill him. But in a movie like this, you make allowances.
They're saying Double Jeopardy is the movie that's going to make you a bankable star.
It's more other people who make those distinctions. Everything I've done has personally been so fun or meaningful to me, from Ruby in Paradise on. The intensity on Smoke was equally as important.
Leonard Goldberg, the veteran producer who did this film, said your agent was calling every two weeks to see what the role's status was once Jodie Foster bowed out.
You'll have to talk to my agent then. I stay out of it. [I look for] a certain tangible sense of criteria that are [addressed] or not when I read a script.
But don't you feel Double Jeopardy is your biggest maybe best role in a movie yet?
I hear that, and it makes me feel like Kiss the Girls or Norma Jean and Marilyn or all the hard work I've done in other films are not as important. [It's like they're] diminished by this being a movie with broad, commercial appeal.
This is an extremely physical role, and Bruce Beresford, your director, said he used stunt doubles rarely. Were you ever hurt?
I sprained my ankle on Kiss the Girls, but on this one I never got hurt. They wouldn't let me jump off the school building [where her character breaks in to find files that will help her trace her husband]. They knew I wanted to, so they shot it while I was off on a dinner break.
[Beresford later observed: "The roof was dangerous. If she broke a leg we'd all have been out of work."]
Is that part of it, doing the stunts?
It's fun and a diversion. And also exciting, and a different kind of challenge. It was very invigorating.
What about that spectacular sequence where you and Tommy Lee Jones are underwater with the sinking car?
The water was cold; they made a Plexiglas container in the ocean and tried to heat the water inside. Admirable effort but ineffective.
[Beresford: "It was very complicated doing that water escape. I had to storyboard it six months ahead of time. It was shot in several locations actually. First was Vancouver Harbor, some of it near a wharf and some in a swimming pool and some was filmed in a deep tank in New Orleans, because you need to see them coming up out of the water. The car in that shot was digitally added because you'd need enormous depth to show that and you could not get the lighting to see it."]
At one point in Double Jeopardy, Libby awakens to find herself buried alive in a coffin. How was that?
In that coffin I cried all day. [We filmed that as] I was coming to the end of the movie. There was something about lying there, and I absorbed the fact the movie was coming to an end; I didn't have any conscious thoughts of mortality. My "girls," as I called the women who worked on the set on wardrobe and makeup and that kind of thing, and I were very close on the film, and no one was there for lunch that a day, and my feelings were hurt, and I cried all that day.
Libby's nightmare is to find herself railroaded into the penitentiary. Have you ever found yourself facing injustice?
Injustice is the most frustrating, intolerable sensation. In the eighth grade I'd like to get this off my chest I got into trouble and was in hall probation. We were the last ones to get lunch, and we had a 10-minute break. I wasn't supposed to wander, and I went to the girls' room. I was in there when this teacher came in looking for me and she sent a note to my mom. There was just no way I could convince this woman I was innocent, she had me written off as a bad kid.
What happened with your mother then? Were you punished?
I got my mother's cold disappointment, which was worse. Here's Mom, she's being so sweet [on the surface] but she was very angry.
It must have been tough on your mother raising two girls alone.
Mom wasn't tough, but she was often frightened being a single parent. She had this quality of desiring an absoluteness. My sister could crack her up, but I didn't have the same sort of wiliness.
How are you different from your mother?
My mother has made herself an example. That's [always been] her mission, whereas I've been, "Look at the girl behind me."
Let's talk about your education. You're a Phi Beta Kappa
Well, I was nominated to Phi Beta Kappa [at the University of Kentucky, which she graduated in 1990].
But you certainly have academic credentials. Do you find that being a beauty with brains sometimes makes things difficult in the movie business? Is intelligence a hindrance here?
You mean, "Do I downplay it for the schmucks?" [Shakes her head.] Being perceptive and having interests is an asset. Do I find people [are generally] surprised I have an urban side to me, or that I'm well rounded in ways they didn't expect an actress or Southerner to be? I'm making guesses here, but I know that often when I'm in someone's office [a producer, or director] after five minutes they'll go, "You're so urban."
Another aspect of your personality is your religious beliefs you've been quite open about your Christianity. Has that ever created any issues for you?
I find [there's generally] a mutual interest and a respect for spirituality, of whatever kind. A lot of people over the years do things like yoga or meditation, and I find there are many ways to express interest in, and a lot of manifestations of, spirituality.
Ashley Judd Interview 2
I've read you retreat from the movie business by going back to a home you have in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee. Can you really "get away from it all" there?
We don't have Spago in Tennessee. I think my peace of mind and my solitude are greatly enhanced by being at home. There's this woman who does clothes [in Hollywood], and she was in Tennessee and came to my house, and took a look around, and said, "Everyone in Brentwood is trying to have their houses look like this!" It's rustic. I live southwest of Nashville. It was built in 1819, and I've restored it over four years.
I've heard you're an interesting hostess. Do you really make visitors take their shoes off when they enter? And make them do chores?
[Smiles.] I have them take off their shoes because I live on 1,000 acres, and there's a lot of dust. The chores can be as little as "Rinse the dishes, and put them in the dishwasher," or "Shake out the throw rugs on the sleeping porch." It's little things. My house is the destination in my family. I've had birthday parties for mom's friends.
You live on 1,000 acres do you farm this place?
Half of the acreage is woods and valleys, and my sister's farm manager keeps it mowed around the lake. I have a five-acre fiefdom within the kingdom.
As you get more famous, do you find you need a place to retreat to?
I appreciate it more. And often the way I do is rooted in [a] fear of recognition a fear of fans, and fear of intrusiveness. [The Tennessee spread] protects me and buffers me against what you call celebrity. The naturalist in me has found that there is nothing in the world that nature cannot soothe that's a quote from Audrey Hepburn.
Do you find Hollywood and the film industry is a world totally apart from anything you've known?
The whole machinery makes you very protective of your own world. The self can be very inundated, and if you're porous, it can batter you.
Let's shift gears a little. What's happening with your romantic life these days?
[Smiles.] Something I've always said is, "That's for God to know and me to find out and you all [can find out] a long time after."
I hear you're quite the hoops junkie. Is there anything better than college basketball?
The [Kentucky] Derby is the only thing better than college basketball. I'm a longtime fan. What's cute is my grandparents were fans, and they tell me about going to Lexington on the old two-lane highway to see the games.
Is there anything better? I made k.d. lang a clover chain once when I was 18. I was so in awe of her, and she is feat of nature, her voice is incredible.
Isn't k.d. in your new movie Eye of the Beholder?
She has a supporting role. It stars Ewan McGregor, and Stephan Elliot [The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert] directed, and it should open in North America in January. I'm [an itinerant], and a lost soul, and Ewan becomes obsessed with me. From a distance he enables me to have this illicit life, and at the end we meet. He works for the British Embassy, and k.d. is his contact at the Embassy. I took a designer friend to see the movie, and 15 minutes into it, he said, "This is the new modern movie." Stephan [always] does something unusual.
You do a nude scene in Double Jeopardy with Bruce Greenwood. Bruce Beresford said you asked how it would be filmed, and he assured you it would be discreet and in good taste. Is there anything you wouldn't do for a role?
For me, my spirituality helps define a movie and reduce it to [a] search: humanity vs. nature, vs. itself, vs. animal. A person either has the love of God or they don't and that's a great [jumping-off point] for playing someone. Take a central issue: My sister [Wynonna] was pregnant with her first son, Elijah. She said to me one day, "You'd never play someone who would kill a child, would you?" And I said, "Who knows?" It depends on where the script goes. [Think of] Clytemnestra or Medea it's staple in drama if not the ultimate of tragedy.
You've just finished filming Where the Heart Is which is based on a book that got singled out on Oprah Winfrey's book club with Natalie Portman. Who do you play in that?
[My character is] Lexie Cooper. She's had four babies, and six by the end of the movie.
There's a neat bit of casting in Double Jeopardy Bruce Greenwood plays your husband. He co-starred in the 1995 TV movie Naomi & Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge as Larry Strickland, your stepfather. He had never met you before the audition for this film, but he told me, "The weird thing was that when I was doing the screen test with Ashley, I was hoping she'd see me as her lover. And she said, 'You played my father.' Whatever pheromones I was generating totally evaporated." How do you deal with the curiosity and the awareness of everyone about the Judds?
We did [an episode of] Oprah about that. That's the tricky thing, in your personal life you do favors. But the trouble with ours is it intersects with a public display. I wasn't interested in the miniseries, but at the last moment I did a voiceover for my mom [because] it was important to her. I'm going, "This is dubious my name is not a combination of my hometown," and "Is any of this true?" Then you throw your hands up and say, "My reward is in heaven."
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