Today Ashley turns 44 
The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.
Full Story: thedailybeast.com
If your television show revolves around a search for someone missing, it helps to have Ashley Judd looking.
That’s ABC’s lesson from Nielsen’s television ratings. Last Thursday’s premiere of the network drama “Missing,” starring Judd as a former CIA agent trying to find a teenage son who disappeared in Rome, landed among the 10 most popular series last week with 10.6 million viewers. The strong sampling came despite “Missing” competing directly with Fox’s “American Idol.”
Meanwhile, ABC’s newish drama “The River,” involving a family’s hunt for a naturalist missing in the Amazon region, landed at No. 73 on Nielsen’s list with an audience of 4.1 million. The man’s family does not include Ashley Judd.
Debut of Ashley Judd’s Drama Missing’ In Top 10
Ashley Judd has been missing from the screen.
In 2010, the actress received a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Last year, she published her autobiography, “All That Is Bitter and Sweet.”
Now Judd headlines the new ABC drama “Missing” (Thursdays at 8 p.m. on WCVB, Ch. 5). The series is the 43-year-old’s first regular TV role since starring in the 1990s drama “Sisters.”
“I read the script and it was sensational,” Judd told the Herald in a telephone interview from her Tennessee home. “It was totally unforgettable, very simple, yet very compelling.”
The Kentucky native stars as Becca Winstone, a former CIA agent searching for her son.
“What appealed to me so much about Becca is she’s a very complete character and woman,” she said. “There’s tragedy and resilience. There’s pain, loss, grief, strength, canniness and determination.”
The 10-episode series filmed throughout Europe and temporarily took Judd away from her writing, her studies and her humanitarian work.
“One of the things I’ve learned is that I can have it all, just not necessarily at the same time,” she said. “And sometimes people ask me questions about how I maintain balance and stuff, and I think it’s all the same work, it’s all the same love, and it’s all coming from the same consciousness. I just do different things at different times.”
Judd, who is the daughter of country singer Naomi Judd and the sister of Wynonna Judd, started working on a second book in December.
“I know that this book is knocking on the door of my soul and it’s there,” she said. “It’s about recovering from childhood grief. When-ever it’s right, I will pick it up again. I kind of speculate that my primary craft is writing.”
In 2006, Judd entered a treatment facility to deal with depression. She is comfortable sharing the details of her upbringing and subsequent recovery.
“I think it’s pretty natural to me at this point,” she said. “I recently gave a talk, and it was a large room of 1,500 people, and part of my message was, ‘If there’s one person here tonight who hears something that they needed to hear, then I came for you.’ … That’s what I’ve been taught in my recovery, because if I can carry my message to one person who is sick and suffering that there is a solution for those of us who have been affected by the family disease of alcoholism, then that’s why I showed up.”
While Judd is happy to discuss her personal life, she was tight-lipped about how the first season of “Missing” will end and whether Becca will reunite with her son.
“Audiences will be very satisfied at the end of the season,” she said. “The ending is both a relief and kind of breathtaking setup of a potential season two, during which the DNA of the show will be maintained. When we all read the ending, we were all screaming and shouting and saying, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’?”
