Ashley Judd was an A-list movie star who worked on blockbuster films with big-name costars for over a decade.
She was paired with the best: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Matthew McConaughey, to name a few.
Her female costars were just as impressive: Sandra Bullock, Natalie Portman and the inimitable Salma Hayek.
Judd even played the biggest pinup Hollywood has ever seen -Marilyn Monroe – in 1996’s Norma Jean & Marilyn.
For the past decade she has been in supporting roles, though she has had some big hits like The Dog’s Way Home in 2019.
But since she injured her leg in 2021 in the Republic of the Congo, the bombshell daughter of Naomi Judd has slowed down.
She has also been in school: Judd graduated from the University of Kentucky in 2007, earned a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2010 and enrolled at UC Berkeley in 2016 to pursue a PhD in Public Policy.
Ashley Judd was a top movie star in the 1990s; seen on the left in the film Someone Like You and on the right on the cover of GQ magazine
But she still posts often on Instagram proving she looks fabulous even in her mid-50s.
In April, Judd delivered a poignant speech about suicide prevention as she opened up about the sudden passing of mother Naomi Judd who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The star appeared alongside other notable suicide prevention advocates – including singer Aloe Blacc and campaigner Shelby Rowe – at the event at the White House complex in Washington.
She opened up about her mother’s struggles with mental health, saying that on the day Naomi took her own life ‘the disease of mental illness was lying to her and with great terror [had] convinced her that it would never get better.’
It comes after Ashley recounted the heartbreaking moment she discovered her mom’s body after she took her own life aged 76 on April 30, 2022.
Ashley took to the stage in a flowing white summer dress but wrapped a hessian blanket over her legs as she took the microphone in hand.
She began: ‘I’m here because I am my beloved mother’s daughter and on the day she died, which will be the two-year anniversary in one week, the disease of mental illness was lying to her and with great terror convinced her that it would never get better…
She was paired with the best: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Matthew McConaughey (seen with Matthew in A Time To Kill in 1996)
With Morgan Freeman in Kiss The Girls in 1997
With Bruce Greenwood in Double Jeopardy in 1999
An image from Double Jeopardy where she was in jail
Judd was a rich wife opposite Kevin Kline in 2004’s De-Lovely
‘I have a firm belief that we deserve to be remembered not just for how we died but how we lived.’
Ashley went on to share details about her mom as she divulged: ‘She also lived most of her life with an untreated and undiagnosed mental illness that lied to her and stole from her.
‘It stole from our family and she deserved better.’
Naomi died from a single gunshot to the head and left a suicide note near her body at at her home in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee.
She had battled with ‘significant’ anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder, according to an autopsy report.
Ashley dished on her own experience with depression as she explained: ‘I’m also here because I was molested by a man for the first time that I remember when I was seven years old.
‘That’s when I had onset of childhood depression and I know the feeling of not wanting to be here but I had a different experience because I went to treatment in 2006 for unresolved childhood grief and sexual trauma.
‘I’ve been in good recovery for 18 years and I’ve had a different outcome than my mother. I carry a message of hope and recovery.’
Elsewhere, Ashley discussed the details of her ‘chosen family’ who she described as being ‘so tightly knit and bonded.’
She shared how they had ‘walked beside her through the entire experience’ of losing her mom.
The White House held the event on the day the annual National Strategy for Suicide Prevention was released to highlight efforts to tackle the mental health crisis and beat the overdose crisis.
In January, Ashley appeared on an episode of CNN’s All There Is with Anderson Cooper to discuss her mother’s death.
Ashley recounted the heartbreaking moment she discovered her mom’s body after she took her own life aged 76 on April 30, 2022 (pictured 2013)
Just two weeks before her shocking death, iconic country singer Naomi stood on stage with her daughter Wynonna in a surprise reunion at the Country Music Awards (pictured)
Ashley said: ‘It was traumatic and unexpected because it was death by suicide and I found her’ but added she was ‘so glad’ she was there for her mother after her death.
‘Even when I walked in that room and I saw that she had harmed herself, the first thing out of my mouth was, “Momma, I see how much you’ve been suffering and it is okay… I am here, and it is okay to let go.”‘
Still stunning! In May Judd looked radiant as she attended a screening for her movie Lazareth in New York City
Last month Ashley shared a photo with her sister Wynonna
And she was seen with this man while enjoying a dessert
Judd was also pictured eating an ice cream cone
Meanwhile, in 2022 Ashley Judd talked about her traumatic accident in the Congo in 2021.
She could have died.
The siren shattered her right leg in four places during a hike through a forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Feb. 2021.
Judd told Kate Roberts on her podcast Sex, Body & Soul, Judd said that she barely survived the 55-hour rescue and was in awful pain.
‘I don’t know how the mind and the body and the soul come together to manage to endure the unendurable,’ she said. ‘I bit a stick, I screamed, I howled, I convulsed. I never did pass out — I wished that I could.’
Judd was lying on the forest floor for five hours before she was rescued by her ‘Congolese brothers.’