Last night I watched Someone Like You. (Hush! I was in the mood for a nice romantic comedy – it stars Greg Kinnear and Hugh Jackman – and it was at the library, so the price was right.)
As I’m listening to the voice-over for the opening set-up, I thought “Damn, too bad they didn’t get a professional actress to read this. Oh wait…” She wasn’t very good. In fairness, it wasn’t a very good movie – WTF with her running around in her underwear for half the movie? Most normal people do not run around in their underwear at home – do they? And WTF with Hugh Jackman’s American accent? It wasn’t a bad American accent, but I found it very distracting.
Anyway – not a very good movie – but I was especially unimpressed with her. She’s not particularly attractive – though she has a nice bod, I guess – and she’s not a particularly good actress.
Or is she? The only other thing I’ve seen her in is De-Lovely, in which I thought she was woefully miscast (young and attractive, which is two things Cole Porter’s wife Linda wasn’t), but not particularly incompetent.
So – Ashley Judd – whaddya think? Am I just missing the point because I’m a middle-aged, straight female?
She used to have a kind of mesmerizing beauty – I wouldn’t necessarily have rated her in the list of the vavavoomiest, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her when she was on screen. She also was really good in Norma Jean & Marilyn, Kiss the Girls, and A Time to Kill. None of them classics of the medium, certainly, but all enjoyable movies, and Judd was the co-lead in both Norma (with Mira Sorvino) and Kiss (Morgan Freeman). But the real coup de grace was her tiny but gut-wrenching part in Smoke. She channeled so much hate into those one or two scenes you wanted desparately to look away – but as I noted above, she was Ashley Judd, so you couldn’t.
She’s picked a bunch of stinky roles almost exclusively in stinky action thrillers in the last couple years and she’s lost some of the magic, but a few years ago I would have recommended anything she appeared in.
–Cliffy
P.S. Didn’t Annabeth Gish look weird in Double Jeopardy – it’s like she lost a third of her face! Is she still that thin?
She was in one very good movie, I think with Morgan Freeman. But that’s not the point.
I’d like to take her out to dinner. I’d like to take her out for drinks and dancing. If there was one celeb I could pick to be stuck on a lost island with, it would be Ashley Judd.
So you see, my opinion lacks objectivity. When one of her movies comes on, I simply watch every move this wonderful creature makes; every word that escapes her lips is a precious thing of beauty. There’s no way I can make a reasonable comment on her abilities.
I watched Someone Like You a couple years ago but have evidently forgotten most of it because I remember no underwear-running-around-in. Might need to put it on my Netflix queue to rewatch. Which, I suppose, answers your question from a 23 year old male perspective.
With that being said though, she’s nowhere near as cute as she used to be.
Well, speaking for myself, I think she is excruciatingly cute. Perhaps for this reason I’ve never really been struck by her lack of acting talent.
However, I saw her on Oprah sometime over the last few months and was less taken with the real her than I expected to be. Nothing I can put my finger on, but she just sort of struck me as someone it might be hard to stay on the good side of.
She’s pretty, but she’s been in a bunch of movies I hated - Double Jeopardy, Someone Like You, Simon Birch… A Time to Kill was just a To Kill a Mockingbird ripoff… man, what a lousy resume…
I’m almost afraid to say this, but I’m a 30-something straight female who really likes Someone Like You. Enough that I went out and bought it, and have since watched it a few times. :eek:
I didn’t notice any bad acting on Judd’s part, but then I am not the most discriminating movie watcher: I like all sorts of movies that are generally considered to be “bad.” I will admit that Hugh Jackman is the major appeal for me in this movie (we get to see him in his undies, too!), but I don’t dislike Ashley Judd. I’d never go see a movie she was in just because of her, but I’ve liked her well enough whenever I’ve seen her.
She’s a beautiful woman and a decent actress with HORRIBLE taste in scripts. She seems to like the kind of plots you see in Lifetime Network movies.
I remember a question that Stuttering John (of Howard Stern fame) once ambushed Chevy Chase with: “Do you actually READ the scripts that are sent to you, or do you just go eeny meeny miney mo?”
I’d love to hear someone ask Ashley that question.
What do I think of Ashley Judd? I think I’m still scarred from seeing her cervix at that one award show back when I was in college, is what I think. When you wear a dress slit up to your crotch, underpants are entirely appropriate. No, really, put on some damned panties. My husband, of course, is still scarred from not seeing that particular show.
The only things I can think of that I’ve seen her in were A Time to Kill, where her role seemed to consist solely of wearing little low-cut sundresses and being sweaty, and Where The Heart Is, where she was really rather good.
One of the interesting things I learned from the Oprah show that she and her sister and mother were on (this to explain why she might be so candid) is that she abhors thongs. She thinks they are nasty, and she thinks they are unhealthy.
So, as an aside, just what did her cervix look like anyway?
Sorry, but since you’ve got Angelina all sewn up, (that smooth British charm and all) we other guys, rich or poor, have no choice but to look elsewhere for our gorgeousness, secondary though it may be to the lovely Miss Jolie.
Yanno, it’s funny – an ad for Miss Congeniality II came on while I was writing the OP, and I thought, “Hm, shall I go see that in the theater or wait till it comes out on video?”
