What quite possibly is the most impressive work the young actress Ashley Judd has ever done was witnessed by only a handful of people. In Oliver Stone’s notorious “Natural Born Killers,” Judd plays the lone survivor of a berserk killing spree perpetrated by Mickey and Mallory Evans (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis).
In a courtroom sequence, with apocalyptic flashbacks dancing in her head, Judd recounts the emotionally detached savagery of the remorseless killers.
In the brutal aftermath, her character suffers a horrible death in a random moment of unspeakable violence.
When the members of the Ratings and Classification Board of the Motion Picture Association of America looked at the film, they branded the movie with an NC-17 rating, citing that scene, which made the film virtually unreleasable.
“They said it was too emotionally harrowing,” Judd says. “I took it as a compliment.”
Stone had little choice and excised the offending footage. Judd was philosophical.
“We all come to our chosen or destined vocations with certain predilections. I never had to do a scene like that. It was a great proving ground, because I came to Chicago (and) for two weeks I was hysterical.”
History, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, rides in the saddle. Two years later, Ashley Judd, 27, the daughter and younger sister of country singers Naomi and Wynonna Judd, is back in Chicago. She is almost unrecognizable, her hair an intoxicating blond as the female star opposite Luke Perry in “Normal Life,” a new film by Chicago filmmaker John McNaughton.
The movie is a based-on-fact treatment of the Ericksons, bookstore owners and an apparently idyllic suburban couple who were, in fact, a contemporary Bonnie and Clyde, a brutally efficient husband-and-wife team of bank robbers who pulled off a daring series of jobs in the western suburbs until both died in separate shootouts with the FBI, local police and federal marshals. Both committed suicide rather than be apprehended.
McNaughton made his reputation with a brilliant, terrifying cult film, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.”
Judd says normally she doesn’t look at the films of the directors she works with to avoid playing to a preconceived style.
“But I looked at `Henry’ in preparation for `Natural Born Killers,’ ” she says.
Whether it was planned or not, Judd–by dint of her family–has been thrust into a public realm of discussion and speculation, where boundaries of privacy and normalcy are frequently shattered.
The Judds, after a phenomenal 10-year run, were forced to disband when Naomi revealed her hepatitis and chronic liver disease in 1991. Their final concert was Dec. 4, 1991.
While Wynonna has forged ahead with a solo career, Naomi, with the publication of her 1993 autobiography and the recent telecast of the NBC-TV mini-series of her life, has candidly and graphically revealed her deepest emotions, feelings and ideas.
Ashley prefers a wholly different route.
“I’m really private, though I may come off as saying intimate things. When I’m interested in talking, I’m going to be honest and say what I really want to say. I’ve never felt it was incumbent on me as an actress to divulge details about my life. That’s a topic that causes a great disbelief in my mother. That is such a contradiction with her. I don’t know if she’ll ever know what I mean.”
Judd made her entry into the collective imagination of the public in January 1993 with a low-budget, independent film, “Ruby in Paradise,” a melancholy work by filmmaker Victor Nunez. It told the story of an Appalachian woman who flees her Tennessee roots and undertakes an epic journey of self-discovery and fulfillment in a resort community in Florida.
Judd’s performance gives the film depth and emotional resonance. “Ruby in Paradise” shared the Grand Jury Prize for best film at Sundance. Almost overnight, a star was born.
Consistent with her integrity and extreme convictions, Judd remained her own person, even in the aftermath of her ascension in the Hollywood film community.
“Basically what it meant to me was an affirmation that my instincts were right. I realized I hadn’t been deluding myself since I was a very small child that I wanted to be an actress.”
Judd is intense, funny, self-aware and incredibly confident. She graduated with honors from the University of Kentucky, majoring in French. Before her breakthrough part in “Ruby in Paradise,” she had a small role in the film “Kuffs” and played recurring roles in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Sisters.”
The itinerant, forlorn life of the actor was an eerie parallel to her growing up, with the same absence of solidity, the disconnectedness from the everyday routine. Her parents divorced when she was 4. Born in Kentucky, Judd and her older sister were shuttled from the South to Los Angeles as Naomi made a living as a nurse.
“I went to 12 schools in 13 years, specifically according to God’s divine plan to prepare me for this incessant commencement and conclusion cycle in which we live as actors,” Judd says.
Acting is for her a linking of the intellect and intuition, the lived experiences.
“I read the script and absorbed and reabsorbed the material in a hundred different ways,” she says. “Eventually that has to get converted into one’s emotional life. There’s a filter where everything that’s not relevant emotionally just gets discarded.”
After “Ruby in Paradise,” Judd has looked to expand and carry through on the promise and power of that part. Along with “Natural Born Killers,” Judd played the love-starved teenager Madge in the Broadway revival of William Inge’s “Picnic.” Currently she appears in a small though pivotal part of “Smoke,” a film by Chinese-American director Wayne Wang (“The Joy Luck Club”) and novelist Paul Auster.
Judd appears as a crack-addicted, pregnant teenager who is violently estranged from her mother (Stockard Channing), drawn into a scene with a man (Harvey Keitel) who may or may not be her father.
“You look at something, and then you decide the framework of what you feel,” Judd says about her powerful scene from “Smoke.”
“Who is that person to me? How do I feel about him or her? What is going on in the scene? You get all that stuff figured out, and then you suck it down into your guts and then you express yourself.”
Judd has completed another project–“The Passion of Darkly Noon,” by English painter and filmmaker Philip Ridley (“The Reflecting Skin”) that was shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
The McNaughton film will be released early next year. So will her other major project, “Heat,” a large-budget film directed by Chicago-born filmmaker Michael Mann (“Last of the Mohicans”) that boasts a highly impressive cast headed by Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Ted Levine and Judd.
“I knew on `Ruby in Paradise’ my range of vision and sphere of responsibility was incredibly limited,” Judd says. “As I’ve gotten more experience and practice, that all comes to me easier, and I’ve had more time to look at the big picture. Until the next `Ruby in Paradise’ comes along, I’m going to keep doing what is right for me.”
