The following article includes references to suicide, mental health problems, and allegations of sexual assault.
Mother-daughter musical duo, The Judds, have been a force in country music since the mid-1980s, but another member of the Judd family would later make her own mark — not in Nashville, but in Hollywood. Born in 1968, according to her Film Reference bio, actor Ashley Judd parlayed a small part in the 1992 feature, “Kuffs,” into the titular role in the 1993 drama, “Ruby in Paradise,” delivering a critically praised performance that put her on Tinseltown’s radar. Film critic Roger Ebert, for one, stated that Judd had given “one of the very best performances of the year.” Further screen credits included such hit movies as “Heat,” “A Time to Kill,” “Kiss the Girls,” and “Double Jeopardy.”
Judd’s career, however, went from red-hot to considerably cooler in the late 1990s, which she would later discover came at the behest of a controversial Hollywood bigwig who, it was alleged, deliberately badmouthed her and cost her opportunities that could have kept her on top. This proved to be just one of many sad facets in the movie star’s troubled life, beginning with her admittedly dysfunctional childhood.
Fans may think they know all about this multi-talented actor and activist, yet they may not be fully aware of some of the personal anguish she’s had to overcome. These are the tragic details of Ashley Judd’s life.
Ashley Judd had an unstable childhood
Her family might have ended up producing three powerhouse entertainers, but before the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, all Ashely Judd had were her dreams. Following her divorce from Michael Ciminella in 1972, Naomi Judd and a much younger Ashley moved to Kentucky in hopes of getting a new start. Before their breakthrough, however, the Judds had their fair share of experiences with poverty as Naomi struggled to provide for her kids. “If we didn’t make it or grow it, we didn’t have it,” Ashley’s sister Wynonna once said, via PBS.
When eventually, Naomi and her older daughter Wynonna kickstarted their career as country singers, a teenage Ashley was forced to bear the grunt of fame. In her 2011 memoir “All That Is Bitter & Sweet,” the “Double Jeopardy” actor detailed an unstable childhood, that resulted in her attending 13 different schools before turning 19. With her mother and half-sister often away on tour, Ashley claims her childhood was also characterized by loneliness. “I loved my mother, but at the same time, I dreaded the mayhem and uncertainty that followed her everywhere. I often felt like an outsider observing my mom’s life as she followed her own dreams,” she wrote in her book.
Ashley Judd’s childhood was marred by abuse
By her own account, Ashley Judd’s childhood was a troubled and harrowing one. Per ABC News, the actor revealed in her 2011 memoir, “All That is Bitter and Sweet,” that she was sexually abused as a child by an unnamed member of her own family.
Ashley opened up about her painful past in 2017 while speaking at the World Congress Against Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls in New Delhi. “I was molested for the first time I remember at the age of seven,” she said bluntly, adding that during her early modeling days, “I experienced two rapes at the age of 14.”
Ashley elaborated on the kind of abuse she’d endured during an interview with “Today,” explaining that it was actually typical of growing up within a “dysfunctional family system that didn’t work very well.” She recounted how her famous musician mother, Naomi Judd, and her stepfather, Larry Strickland, were “wildly sexually inappropriate in front of [both herself and her older half-sister, Wynonna Judd].” Noting that the sisters were forced, for example, “to listen to a lot of loud sex in a house with thin walls,” Ashley said, “I now know this situation is called covert sexual abuse.”
