No Sibling Rivalry for Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd didn’t become an actress just because her mother, Naomi, and older sister Wynona happen to be country-music superstars The Judds.

“The only way their career parlayed into my doing what they do is that they very forcefully and courageously pursued an outrageous dream,” Judd explains.

Judd, 23, is featured as Swoosie Kurtz’s rebellious daughter Reed on NBC’s “Sisters” and has a small part in NBC’s thriller “ ‘Till Death Do Us Part,” airing Monday. And next week, she leaves for Florida to start filming the movie “Ruby in Paradise,” in which she plays the title role.

Judd, who has a bachelor of arts degree in French from the University of Kentucky where she was in the honors program, admits that she had never seen “Sisters” when she auditioned for the part last fall. Quite simply, she doesn’t watch TV.

“It is in the floor of my garage and every now and then I will hook the VCR up to it to watch old movies,” Judd says. “I was raised without TV. I was raised on imagination and books, for which I am eternally grateful.”

Judd is in the midst of reading the works of John Steinbeck. “I find some things have an overall greatness. In general, a few of the smaller books are less interesting. There are about 20 things for me to read. I guess I have read 14 or so.”

Judd had a real vagabond upbringing before moving out here in 1990, attending 12 schools in 13 years. “My mother was a nomad. She didn’t have a job waiting at the other end. She’d just up and we would go. We spent summers in the back of the car hanging out the window saying, ‘Where are we going?’ ”

During her senior year in high school, Judd lived with her maternal grandmother “which was a real turnaround.” Her grandmother cooked her dinner every night, washed her P.E. clothes on Fridays, took her to movies on Saturdays. “It was the first time I was in a traditional family. It really calmed me down and I became more real while I was with her.”