Just Like Us

Maybe it was her “chaotic” childhood or the college years she describes as “transformational.” Or, maybe, it’s simply a way to move in the world—an innate sense of compassion— that compels Ashley Judd to give back.

Judd may be best known for her film career, with starring roles in Kiss the Girls, Double Jeopardy, Norma Jean & Marilyn, De-Lovely, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and scores of others. She is the daughter of country singer Naomi Judd, who formed an iconic singing duo, The Judds, with Wynona Judd, Ashley’s half sister. She has been married since 2001 to Scottish auto racer Dario Franchitti, with whom she lives on a farm in Tennessee and in Scotland. She is also the face of Estée Lauder’s American Beauty cosmetics line. That is the glamorous life that most people ascribe to Judd, but it is only one side of her story.

The list of social causes that Judd has been involved with is impressive, not only because she is genuinely committed to them, but because they are rooted in the most disenfranchised populations on Earth. Unlike many of her Hollywood peers, the successful actress has dodged the diva bullet and embraced global issues like HIV/AIDS, overpopulation, disease prevention and children’s health. Her focus these days is an organization called Population Services International (PSI), a nonprofit organization with grassroots health programs in 65 developing countries that is focused on prevention and treatment.

“We have a very strong focus on reproductive health, family planning, maternal health and child survival,” Judd says. “Child survival includes, but is not limited to, safe drinking water, TB and upper respiratory tract infections, malaria prevention and treatment, and diarrheal diseases. We also work in HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention, and those we call our youth-based programs.”

Judd says she has the “extravagantly flattering title” of global ambassador for the organization, which involves quarterly board meetings as well as speaking engagements and travel around the world to see firsthand the kind of suffering most Americans cannot imagine.

“I am often considered the public face of PSI because we are a very serious, very dedicated nongovernmental organization that does hard-core work around the world. We are very serious about our bottom-line impact,” she says.

The work can mean standing in a Mumbai slum with a young girl destined for a life of poverty, disease, even human trafficking, or visiting a genocide memorial in Rwanda—experiences Judd says inevitably result in a “pretty profound spiritual crisis” every time.

Mumbai was a point in fact. “I was just sitting with this little girl who was so ripe for opportunistic infection due to malnutrition and exploitation for sex and labor slavery,” she says. “My circumstances were very different when I was growing up—no way am I comparing my young life to hers—but I did identify with her vulnerability and sense of chaos. Because, to a very large extent, I had a very unsafe childhood, and that doesn’t mean my parents didn’t love me because, of course, they did. I can say this with genuine, heartfelt clarity; they did absolutely the best they could with what they had at the time.”

And sometimes that wasn’t good enough, she admits. In her early years she was shuttled to as many as 13 different schools in 12 years, alternately living with her mother, her father and her grandmother. She became what she calls a “hypervigilant child,” raising herself under unpredictable circumstances, becoming lonely, depressed, isolated—all feelings she kept under wraps for years.

In fact, Judd has been open about the treatment program she entered in 2006 at the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap, Texas, to address the issues arising from that childhood. “All I know is that I am grateful now for those experiences because I had the opportunity to do a lot of healing work on myself, and that has endowed me with a fairly awesome capacity for compassion and empathy.”

It is that empathy that seems to illuminate Judd’s life these days, but she says we all have a way of serving. “Oh, there are many ways of giving,” she says. “We all have a way of serving.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine a woman with such a high profile not bending to the pressure of Hollywood, not immersing herself in the culture of success and visibility. It’s hard to imagine trading in Malibu, Calif., for a farm in Tennessee.

“If I looked back from a timeline perspective, an interesting series of things happened that set me up to live in Tennessee,” she says. Her Malibu home burned, she returned home to Tennessee and then she broke an ankle in a riding accident, which also kept her in Tennessee, she says. Then she starred in Picnic on Broadway, followed by movies that kept her traveling around the globe. “And I would come home to Tennessee and connect to the rural lifestyle that really speaks to my soul,” she says. “The next thing I knew, I had settled into a way of life, and I’m really grateful for it because I have a really deep sense of community here.”

But that community is, again, only part of Judd’s life; her place is also on the global stage, with a global perspective she has gained from her work with PSI. We asked why a global perspective was so important.

Judd says the very poor people in developing countries are no different than anyone else in their aspirations, their hopes for their families, their desire to raise healthy, well-nourished children. “They are just like us. That’s the humanitarian reason,” she says. “If a person doesn’t get it on that level, there are so many practical economic reasons, not the least of which is overpopulation, competition for resources, the degradation of the natural environment due to stress on the environment, preventable disease. They are a massive threat to national security. When we can help poor women have fewer children and space those births with healthy intervals, we can help the mother’s health and give better care to the children they already have. That helps the American economy. Overly large populations are unstable populations.”

Judd’s hit list for social change includes stemming overpopulation, energy independence, “especially solar and wind,” and the cessation of mountaintop removal coal mining. “Those are my biggies,” she says.

And they are also the big reason she is involved with PSI and other social causes. “I have been given such unique and special opportunities to do the work in incredibly meaningful ways,” she says. “It’s very empowering knowing that there are problems but not stopping there, because I think it’s abusive to point out a problem without highlighting a solution. Not only do I get to help find the solutions; I get to implement a practical plan of action.”