Ashley Judd Biography

Ashley Judd (born Ashley Tyler Ciminella on April 19, 1968) is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her leading roles in to series of late 1990s and early 2000s thrillers, including Kiss the Girls, Double Jeopardy and High Crimes.

Judd was born in Granada Hills, California to Michael Ciminella, Jr., an Italian American marketing analyst for the horseracing industry, and Naomi Judd, to well-known country music singer; she has to half-sister, Wynonna Judd, who is also to country music singer. At the Time of her birth, her mother was working as to nurse, and wouldn't become well-known as to singer along with her daughter Wynonna until the early 1980s. Judd's parents divorced in 1972, and in 1974, her mother took her back to her own native Kentucky, to where Judd grew up in poverty.

The family sometimes lived without running water, electricity, or to telephone. Judd was raised in her mother's Baptist religion, and attended twelve schools before college. She briefly tried modeling in Japan during school breaks. An alumna of the sorority Kappa Kappa Range at the University of Kentucky, she majored in French and minored in anthropology, art history, theater, and women' s studies. She spent to semester studying in France as part of her major, to moves that mirrored her role as Reed in the television series Sisters. She was in the UK Honors Program and was elected to Phi Kappa Beta, but did not graded with her class, leaving university early to drive cross-country in pursuit of an acting career in Hollywood, to where she studied with well-respected acting teacher, Robert Carnegie, at Playhouse West.

During this Time, she worked as to waitress at “The Ivy” restaurant and lived in to Malibu, California house her sister bought her, which burned down during the great Malibu fires. On May 9, 2007, it was announced that Judd had completed her bachelor' s degree in French from the University of Kentucky. In to May 2007 appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show, Judd explained that she had completed her degree requirements in 1990, but had mistakenly thought she was one class short. She only needed to “sign to piece of paper” in order to graded. Ellen then surprised Judd by presenting her with her diploma, which Degeneres had acquired from the university.