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Having not been fans of the TV show Sisters, nor having caught her turn as "Wife of the Paint Store Owner" in Kuffs -- the lesser role she reportedly accepted because the lead required nudity -- nor having seen The Judd's Farewell Concert in 1991, nor the TV movie, a year later, called Till Death Do Us Part, the first time we saw Ashley Judd was in the 1993 independent film Ruby in Paradise. Judd played Ruby, a damaged but defiant young woman on the run from an abusive lover, who ends up in Florida working in a souvenir shop. In the role, Judd -- then just twenty-five years old -- was by turns headstrong, demure, stubborn, delicate, vulnerable, foolish, and irresistibly appealing. It was a fine performance in a fine movie, and one that left us with one question as we exited the theatre: was she possibly a Judd?
As in Naomi and Wynonna Judd?
As in the big-hair, red-nails, clown-makeup-wearing, suede-tassel-sporting, fussin', cussin', feudin', and fightin' Judds?
Apparently, it was true. She was an honest-to-goodness Judd. But after seeing Ruby in Paradise, we were sure that little Ashley had been spirited away from Casa Judd as an infant -- just at the moment, no doubt, that Mama Judd was about to swab baby's eyelids with her very first streaks of blue eyeshadow, while big sister Wynonna prepped the curling iron -- and raised in a series of stable, nurturing, and hairspray-free foster homes.
At that point, back in 1993, Judd the Youngest seemed poised (in every sense of the word) not only to shake her family's cornpone legacy, but to develop into a kind of Kentucky-Fried Jodie Foster -- strong, beautiful, nuanced, and with a soft country lilt in her voice. Her cameo in Smoke, as a drug-numbed wastrel, confirmed the considerable acting chops she'd displayed in Ruby in Paradise. Even when she turned up in Heat and, later, A Time to Kill -- in nearly identical supporting roles as a strong and scrappy wife -- it seemed less a deviation from the path than a Hollywood initiation, a welcoming to the fold. Strong female lead roles are famously hard to come by, but surely someone had a The Accused or The Silence of the Lambs or even an Aliens to pass Judd's way, just as soon as her schedule cleared.
Well, someone did, except it wasn't Silence of the Lambs, it was Kiss the Girls. And it wasn't a launching pad for Judd's career, it was a pothole -- and one she seemed glad to fall into.
Kiss the Girls teamed Judd with Morgan Freeman and established her as a legitimate, if second-tier, female box-office draw -- someone who, if you counterprogrammed the movie just right, could fill seats on an off weekend, when some testosterone-drunk epic like Armageddon was opening down the street. So what if she was only using a scrap of the talent she'd displayed just a few years earlier? And so what if the complex and compelling Ruby had been whittled down to a familiar action-movie heroine: one who only needs a clenched jaw (she's defiant!), a slit skirt (she's sexy!), a snub-nosed revolver (she's threatening!), and a craggy father figure (but not too threatening!) to keep our attention and win our approval. The success, a few years later, of the absurdist revenge fantasy Double Jeopardy (a film in which Judd inherited the lead after, yes, Jodie Foster dropped out) only secured her stature as Hollywood's favourite defiant doll. (This time, she hunts down her evil and vaguely effeminate husband under the wise tutelage of Tommy Lee Jones, the craggiest father figure going.)
In the strange alchemy of Hollywood, tough chicks who hide .38s in the folds of their strapless gowns don't actually get to have sex with anyone, unless it's the abusive creep in the movie's first act -- which might in part explain why audiences didn't buy Judd in the repellently bland romantic comedy Someone Like You, in which she starred with Hugh Jackman. Similarly, no one flocked to see her in Where the Heart Is, in which she played the kind of down-home country gal that, at least on paper, once seemed likely to become her bread-and-butter -- the kind of character that Ruby, by all rights, should have been but wasn't, thanks mostly to Judd's transcendent skills. While Judd didn't return for the Kiss the Girls sequel Along Came A Spider, she did sign on for High Crimes, the bizarre non-sequel sequel that once again cast her as a tough, resilient (but sexy!) woman out for justice, again under the eye of the watchful Papa, Morgan Freeman.
Soon Judd was a fixture on the cover of InStyle and behind the Oscar podium, if only as a presenter. Earlier in her career, she seemed destined to make a different kind of Oscar appearance. But somewhere along the way, Judd went from being the next Jodie Foster to the next (or, rather, a concurrent) Sandra Bullock -- rotating between forgettable romantic comedies and throwaway action thrillers, with the occasional sappy, Southern-flavoured hankiefest squeezed in along the way. In fact, the career paths of Bullock and Judd have now converged, at least temporarily, as both star in the upcoming Secrets of the Divine Ya-Ya Sisterhood -- a film for which both seem such inevitable casting choices that their names were probably typed into the script's original draft.
Bullock is slightly more adept with a goofy pratfall, while Judd is better at the squinty-eyed tough stuff, but other than that, they're now essentially the same actress. With Bullock, her career -- generously peppered with films like Hope Floats, Practical Magic, Forces of Nature, and Miss Congeniality -- feels like the logical outgrowth of the spunky but limited talent she displayed in the star-making Speed. With Judd, however, each new murky thriller or misguided screwball romp seems not only like more kindling on the raging pyre of Hollywood mediocrity, but direct repudiations of the long, interesting, and memorable acting career that might have been. Who knows if Ashley Judd knows about this, or cares? But lots of Hollywood stars might have wistful thoughts about where their career might have gone, had they made different decisions. With Judd, the regret isn't just hers, but ours.
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