Fun, Fearless, Female of the Year, actress Ashley Judd
The competition was fierce–now, find out who’s worthy of our highest Cosmo honors. Read on about our 1998 celebrity fun, fearless female, our winning readers, 11 women in the news who blow our hair back, plus stars who live what Cosmo preaches. Yes! you can have ita all!
Fun? Yes! Fearless? Oh yeah! Female–without a doubt (see picture at right). Now, add to her list of Cosmo qualities the fact that she speaks fluent French, kick-boxes, and skydives for kicks. All that and her big box-office hit Kiss the Girls is precisely why we agree with her boyfriend, Michael Bolton, that this woman’s confidence, drive, and thrill-seeker outlook make her worthy of our highest Cosmo honors.
Ashley Judd is a woman who knows what she wants. And she wants many thins. For example, during today’s rehearsal for the VH1 Fashion Awards, which she’s cohosting with Harry Connick, Jr., she variously demands (and gets):
A cup of wheat-grass juice and a slice of pumpkin pie
Some stationery, so she can write a note to her friend The Edge from U2
An appointment scheduled at Harry Winston Jewelers around her upcoming lunch with Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner
A volume of Emily Dickinson poems, so she can copy a particularly apt favorite in longhand for a friend whose son just died
A chartered plane to Europe, to transport her to her boyfriend, singer Michael Bolton, after she tapes the awards
No matter what the subject–food, affairs of the heart, career–Ashley Judd is usually in charge. Joel Schumacher, who directed Judd in A Time to Kill, says, “Whether you’re climbing Mount Everest or playing charades, you would want Ashley to be with you, because you feel she can focus her laser-intense intelligence on almost anything and do well at it.”
She’s certainly in command of her fastrising star, which is thankfully based not on hype but on a vivid presence and a nononsense perceptiveness that translates brilliantly on screen. After debuting in 1993 in the modest Sundance hit Ruby in Paradise, she appeared in several other interesting independent films (Smoke, A Perfect Life) and less-interesting roles in bigger movies (Heat, A Time to Kill). By last fall, she had graduated to a star-making studio vehicle, the thriller Kiss the Girls, which was an unexpected smash, taking in some $60 million in the U.S. alone.
And she’s come this far with surprisingly little compromise. Her wardrobe for the VH1 show is a case in point. Actresses hosting fashion awards often become mannequins for contemporary designers, and that’s what VH1′s producers expected of Judd–especially since she’s personal friends with Giorgio Armani, Valentino, and the design team Badgleu Mischka. Instead, she opted for vintage dresses, each representing a different decade.
The vintage dresses, explains Judd, 29, “are more indicative of who I am.” Which is ? “Not very into momentary fancy or slobbering over the latest hoo-hee-ha. I thought it would be more substantively to reflect on where these fashions that we now value came from.” She pauses and smiles. “Also, I feel sensational in them!”
Judd proves her female instincts correct when she models the outfits for her hair and makeup people in her dressing room. As she dons a silver-beaded flapper dress, then an orange sleeveless femme-fatale number from the ’30s, then a poufy yellow theatrical gown from the ’50s, Judd displays her period versatility, her timeless beauty, her fierce individuality–and, not incidentally, her recently toned body.
Judd slips the garments on and off without bothering to retreat behind a screen, though she’s wearing nothing underneath. She never blushes or breaks stride, despite the presence of several men and mirrors in the cramped space. “Who cares?” she asks later with a shrug. “Everybody’s working. It’s much more coy to leave the room.”
Coy is not an adjective that will ever apply to Ashley Judd. “I am counterprogrammed against that feminine-wile thing,” she says. “The thought of being strategic makes me want to throw up. To toss my head or bat my eyes–that is not about my essence.”
Judd prides herself on her directness. “I confront problems sooner as opposed to later,” she says. “That’s big motto for me. And it pays excellent dividends.” Though she recently reverted to her natural brunette after several films spent as a blonde, she says her personality wasn’t affected. “I’m a ball-buster, blonde or brunette!”
Of all the actresses trying to navigate Hollywood’s murky waters, Judd most deserves the designations “fun” and “fearless.” Her idea of fun, though, is a little offbeat. As she says, “I don’t know too many people who like to read the dictionary.”
Also, most people would be anxious at the prospect of hosting their first awards ceremony, an often thankless job that invites catty scrutiny. But Judd attacked it with verve. “I’ve been attending awards shows since I was 14,” she says–her mother, Naomi, and sister, Wynonna, were the country music at The Judds–”so it’s a very comfortable atmosphere. Besides, it’s not a serious exploration of my arty side.”
That’s for certain. Judd and Connick spend much of the rehearsal day filming comedy bits that will precede the show, in which they pretend to rehearse their lines, boss models around, build scenery, even deliver a stagehand’s baby. During one of Connick’s scripted mistakes (“Welcome to the 1997 Oscars”), she giddily ad-libs, “Are you wasted?”
“She’s a lot of fun,” Connick says between takes. “She’s a woman, but she likes to act crazy–making faces at you, cracking jokes. She’s a good girl, but she doesn’t have any inhibitions. It’s a great combination.”
Such multiplicity is crucial to Judd. To her, the word womanhood means “fullness and integrity,” she says. “It means having it all in terms of being a physical, emotional, and spiritual person.”
Steel Magnolia
Though Judd’s mind is constantly ticking, she also has a strong playful streak. Both were in evidence when she signed on to star in A Small Miracle, due in theaters this spring. She took the job after barely reading the script, because she’d read and loved the book on which it’s based, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. But also, during filming, she and one of her 12-year-old costars spent a night toilet-papering the director’s trailer.
She’s always been a restless, forceful soul. You could chalk it up to her tumultuous childhood–her parents divorced when she was 4, and before The Judds became successful, mom Naomi worked several jobs and moved the kids around a lot. Or perhaps Ashley had to learn early on how to hold her own with two other charismatic women in the family. “My mom gave me the nickname ‘giraffe,’” Judd says, “because I was always sticking my neck out. They perceived me as bold. I’d go places she and my sister didn’t, geographically and interest-wise.”
The only fears she had growing up were “micro,” she says, “because it’s too terrifying for a child to worry about the ‘macros.’ Instead of worrying how we were going to pay the rent, I was afraid of getting grounded, having telephone privileges suspended, if people were going to be able to tell my shoes were cheap or I’d safety-pinned my dress because it didn’t really fit right. My imagination was a great, safe retreat. And doing well in school–that was the area where I could be in charged of my own destiny.”
After graduating from the University of Kentucky with a degree in French, she was accepted into the Peace Corps, but friends convinced her to give Hollywood a shot. When she moved out there, she had braces on her teeth and had to learn the ropes. She took acting classes, waitressed at the Hollywood hot spot The Ivy, and worked as an assistant at an agency that handled actors, directors, and writers.
Even in those circumstances, she was no wallflower; when she turned 23, her then-boyfriend’s present was a skydive. “I’ve always emanated a certain sense of fearlessness,” she says. “Why else would someone take you skydiving on your birthday?”
Asked about the experience, she says, “It’s absurd to fling yourself from a flying aircraft, with the planet far beneath you and the noise of the wind. It is the definition of hysteria–and a great deal of fun. I wanted to go again right away, and I did.”
One-Man Woman
A few weeks after t he VH1 taping, Judd settles into a banquette at a New York City restaurant, wearing silver-glitter nail polish she describes as “a third grader’s dream” and a snakeskin Valentino jacket that she calls “the coolest thing I’ve ever had. Isn’t it funny,” she remarks, “I’m trying to get warm with a cold-blooded creature.”
Actually, she’s been getting warm with one of the most popular crooners of the past decade. Asked to describe her ideal man, she replies immediately: “An equal.” Then she adds, “Someone willing to express his feelings. Someone who leans forward as opposed to looking back.” Michael Bolton, 43, whom she met at a concert of her sister’s, has provided that her her. His vegetarianism inspired her to become one, even though she used to relish devouring a big steak.
Judd had experience dating a fellow celebrity–she was with her A Time to Kill costar Matthew McConaughey just before his media blitz. But she says, “I don’t look at them as public figures. It’s about knowledge of a person’s spirit.” For instance, she maintains friendships with both bad-boy actor Sean Penn and socialite Blaine Trump. “Quality people are quality people,” she says, “regardless of their personal styles or seeming differences.”
And it was Bolton who helped her last year when, after filming six movies in a row, she found that her “tanks were empty,” and she suffered about of depression that lasted several months. She cherished being “with a grown-up, a person with some experience and seasoning and understanding, who as also fallible.” Looking back, she says, “I recommend being sad for a season. Your dark night of the soul. Because God can’t be faithful to you if you don’t give God a chance to see you through someting see you through something.”
And no, Bolton didn’t chop off his famous hair for her in a sort of Samson and Deliah act; in fact, Judd was kind of sorry to see it go, “like retiring your favorite pair of sweatpants. But he’s a gorgeous man, and I think it’s much better presented now.”
Ashley recently dreamed about a pool with three diving boards–low, medium, and high. “If you close the low board, you’d break your neck,” she recalls. “You were only safe if you chose the higher boards.”
And he often throws herself into things, be it love, work, or just a book. “A friend of mine doesn’t understand why I’m so bold with regard to risking my heart, why I just assume the world is a safe place,” she says. “But of course, you’re going to get knocked around. You can’t avoid heartache.
Though her mother gave her the nickname “fearless,” Judd insists that it be softened. “A label us limiting,” she says. “I’m not fearless, but I do have courage, which is action in the face of fear.” She makes the distinction between being courageous and being hard: “I still want to be able to be vulnerable or broken or frightened.”
For instance, when she drops the biggest bombshell of the interview–”I have a voice lesson tomorrow”–she immediately regrets her candor. Judd has long sworn that she had no interest in treating on her mother and sister’s turf, claiming she couldn’t sing a note. But her decision to study singing has nothing to do with that, she insists. “People are going to read so much into it, but I don’t mean it that way at all.” She’s just hoping to get the role of Ruth Etting, a 1920s torch singer, in an upcoming movie. “It’s like doing an accent,” she says, “or learning to kick-box for Kiss the Girls.” Still, even if it’s for a job, getting into that arena, given her roots seems–well, fearless.
Last summer, Judd had a blast hanging out on her family farm in Kentucky with her sister’s kids, Elijah, 3, and Grace, 1. At the pool, she would entertain them with “the no-hands squirrel dive,” she explains, “this bombastic leap off the diving board.” For an encore, she would line up all the floats and try to run across the entire pool on them without falling in. No, she hasn’t mastered that maneuver yet, but never count her out.
Cosmopolitan – 02/1998
