Born Ashley Tyler Ciminella, on April 19, 1968, in Los Angeles, California. Her father, sports broadcasting producer Michael Ciminella, left the family before she was four years old, and Ashley moved with her mother, Naomi Judd, and older sister, Wynonna, to her parents’ native state of Kentucky soon after. She was 15 when her mother and sister signed their first record deal, with RCA, as the country-singing duo, the Judds.
      The studious Ashley attended college at the University of Kentucky, where she majored in French and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
     Judd considered joining the Peace Corps but was encouraged by Wynonna, among others, to try her luck in Hollywood. She moved to Los Angeles in 1990, where , after two years of study, Judd won a small role in the disappointing Christian Slater vehicle Kuffs (1992), which was enough to earn her a Screen Actor’s Guild card.
     Judd made her big-screen breakthrough in 1993, when she played the title role in the well-received independent film Ruby in Paradise, which won that year’s Grand Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
     Judd, and her new husband, Dario Franchitti, live on a 100-year-old farm in Tennessee, close to both Naomi and Wynonna.