My first big acting performance was in the Marilyn Monroe biography piece, and it required frontal nudity. I talked to Mira Sorvino, my co-star, about how nervous I was because I didn't know how my mom would react. She said, 'Can I be completely honest with you? I've seen your mom in interviews, and she seems pretty screwed up. I don't think there's much you could do to shock a broad like that.' And from that moment on it was big nipples to the wind!
Ashley JuddPeople say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it's most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.
Ashley JuddDaily meditation keeps me sane. I memorize prayers or poems that express my highest spiritual ideals, and quietly, word for word, go through the prayer first thing in the morning. Julian of Norwich or St. Francis or the compassionate Buddha. It's called passage meditation. You internalize the perennial philosophies.
Ashley JuddThe Conversation about womenโs 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.
Ashley Judd