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"Ashley Judd emerges from her Franklin, Tennessee, house with a pot of jasmine tea in one hand and a bowl of boysenberry ice cream in the other. She invites me to sit down and take in the view: miles of rolling green hills, endless rows of dogwood trees and a garden of bluebells she planted herself. Later, she takes me on a tour of her home, a circa-1800 farmhouse that has plenty of rooms but manages to feel incredibly cozy at the same time. Touches of the 38-year-old American Beauty spokeswoman are everywhere: piles of gardening books; paraphernalia from the organization YouthAIDS, for which Judd serves as global ambassador; and dozens of photos of her husband of nearly five years, race-car driver Dario Franchitti. This is the Judd the world knows &amp;amp;#8212;gorgeous, happy and the picture of Southern hospitality. But there&amp;#x27;s another woman behind that flawless smile &amp;amp;#8212;one who&amp;#x27;s spent years battling depression, isolating herself from her friends and keeping her anguish hidden from everyone she knew. &amp;quot;I needed help,&amp;quot; says Judd. &amp;quot;I was in so much pain.&amp;quot; Growing up in Tennessee, the daughter of country-music star Naomi Judd remembers her childhood as &amp;quot;complete chaos,&amp;quot; the result of constantly being uprooted from home and school. &amp;quot;When I was in third grade, I didn&amp;#x27;t even know who to put on my emergency contact form,&amp;quot; Judd says. To compensate for the dysfunction, she made herself into a perfect child: talented, charming and not any trouble. And she went on to become a perfect adult, achieving stardom in 2002&amp;#x27;s Frida and 2004&amp;#x27;s De-Lovely (for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe). Meanwhile, her older sister, Wynonna, spiraled into food addictions. But it was Wynonna&amp;#x27;s decision to finally tackle her demons that led Judd to her own life-changing epiphany. During a &amp;quot;family week&amp;quot; visit to Wynonna at the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap, Texas, Judd realized she had issues she&amp;#x27;d never dealt with before. Counselors noticed too, and invited her to stay for treatment. She said yes. Now, says the star of Come Early Morning and this winter&amp;#x27;s Bug, &amp;quot;everything about me has changed except my name.&amp;quot; Read on for Judd&amp;#x27;s surprisingly candid words about the decision that changed her life &amp;amp;#8212;and all the good things that have followed. GLAMOUR: You&amp;#x27;ve gone through a huge life change. What exactly happened when you went to visit Wynonna? ASHLEY JUDD: Well, one of the things families are asked to do is allow the person in treatment to talk about their perception of their lives without interruption. I found I was having traumatic responses to what I was hearing: I would get light-headed and almost pass out. And what I realized is that I wanted this opportunity for myself. GLAMOUR: Did you talk to anyone about how you were feeling? AJ: No, but the counselors must have noticed what I was going through. When they approached me about treatment they said, &amp;quot;No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good; you&amp;#x27;re too smart and together. But you [and Wynonna] come from the same family &amp;amp;#8212;so you come from the same wound.&amp;quot; No one had ever validated my pain before. It was so profound. GLAMOUR: What, exactly, did they say you needed treatment for? AJ: Codependence in my relationships; depression; blaming, raging, numbing, denying and minimizing my feelings. But because my addictions were behavioral, not chemical, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have known to seek treatment. At Shades of Hope, my behaviors were treated like addictions. And those behaviors were killing me spiritually, the same as someone who is sitting on a corner with a bottle in a brown paper bag. GLAMOUR: So what were the first few weeks like? AJ: We were asked to do an incredible amount of written work &amp;amp;#8212;hundreds of pages of self-evaluation, some of which we shared in group therapy. I remember the night I shared my history of depression, like the way I used to use sleep to cope with uncomfortable feelings. When I finished, the counselors and my peers were looking at me with huge eyes. They said, &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;re really glad you&amp;#x27;re here.&amp;quot; GLAMOUR: What is one of the most surprising things you discovered about yourself in the first few weeks? AJ: Well, I do this thing on airplanes and in hotels that I never thought was a problem, where I wipe down all the plastic surfaces around me. The first time I looked at that in treatment and thought I might have to refrain from wiping, I cried for 25 minutes &amp;amp;#8212;sobbed from my toenails. I said, &amp;quot;How can you tell me that&amp;#x27;s an addiction? I&amp;#x27;m not hurting anybody.&amp;quot; But it&amp;#x27;s not about germs &amp;amp;#8212;it&amp;#x27;s about control. GLAMOUR: Can you give us a sense of where all this pain comes from? What was your childhood like? AJ: Complete and total chaos. I lived alternately with my mother, father and grandmother and went to 13 schools in 12 years. Everything was in such a state of disarray and dysfunction that I became a hypervigilant child, doing the best I could to raise myself under extraordinarily unpredictable and unsafe circumstances. Now I can look back and say, &amp;quot;Gee, I wasn&amp;#x27;t just alone a lot &amp;amp;#8212;I was really lonely. I was clinically depressed at the age of eight.&amp;quot; GLAMOUR: Why did you think that being &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot; would make you feel better? AJ: That&amp;#x27;s how I got love as a kid. Supposedly my sister was the &amp;quot;messed-up&amp;quot; one and I was the &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot; one. So I stayed out of trouble, making sure not to be a bother or a burden or to have needs, and that was damaging. A wonderful pastor I know once told me, &amp;quot;Perfectionism is the highest order of self-abuse.&amp;quot; So now I try to remind myself that if I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself. Period. GLAMOUR: What is the most profound lesson you learned in treatment? AJ: That in order to stay healthy, I have to feel all my feelings instead of numbing myself to them &amp;amp;#8212;and actually, when I allow myself to do that, they pass more quickly. I spent my entire life telling everyone I was &amp;quot;OK, damn it.&amp;quot; But when you surrender to the [uncomfortable] feelings, there are gifts on the other side: Allowing yourself to feel loneliness forces you to reach out. Letting yourself get angry gives you strength, energy and motivation. GLAMOUR: What are some of the specific ways you&amp;#x27;ve changed? AJ: I used to isolate myself; I would go to L.A. and my friends wouldn&amp;#x27;t even know I&amp;#x27;d come through town. I used to blame others for how I was feeling. And I now know that no one can make you feel anything. One of my favorite quotes is by Eleanor Roosevelt: &amp;quot;No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.&amp;quot; GLAMOUR: How has all this affected your relationship with Dario? AJ: It&amp;#x27;s allowed me to appreciate how much he loves me. All of my relationships have improved as a result of treatment. GLAMOUR: Tabloids reported you were being treated for an eating disorder&amp;amp;#8230; AJ: I think it was an easy thing [for them] to say: My sister is an overeater and I&amp;#x27;m little, so I must be anorexic or bulimic. I&amp;#x27;m not, but I did take a look at my eating&amp;amp;#8212;why wouldn&amp;#x27;t I? I looked at everything else in my life under a microscope. GLAMOUR: Have your friends had a tough time adjusting to the new you? AJ: Interestingly, my friendships have only gotten stronger. Nobody&amp;#x27;s been thrown out with the bathwater. Some people expressed fear that I was going to come out of treatment with a personality whitewash&amp;amp;#8212;that what was quirky, original and eccentric about me was going to be drained. So I wrote notes to people to reassure them. GLAMOUR: So what are some of the ways your friendships have improved? AJ: I&amp;#x27;ve learned how to give and receive &amp;quot;confrontations.&amp;quot; They encourage you to ask for what you need, and force you to take responsibility for your part in things. You might say to a friend, &amp;quot;When you unconsciously cover your mouth with your hand while speaking, it seems like you believe your voice doesn&amp;#x27;t matter, and that frustrates me. I would like you to do some work on your self-esteem; I intend to do the same.&amp;quot; Then both parties sit with it for 24 hours and revisit it. GLAMOUR: Soon after treatment, you traveled to Central America for YouthAIDS with Salma Hayek. How did it go? AJ: It was a great trip. The president of Guatemala publicly declared he was increasing his HIV/AIDS commitment by over $5 million! But 25 years into the AIDS epidemic, we&amp;#x27;re still so far from a cure. Over the weekend, I watched a video of President Reagan&amp;#x27;s health secretary saying that within two years there might be a vaccine. That was in 1984! GLAMOUR: You&amp;#x27;re starring in two new films: What drew you to them? AJ: It was a very simple decision to do Come Early Morning [which premiered at Sundance this year]: It was clear the director, Joey Lauren Adams&amp;amp;#8212;who also wrote the script&amp;amp;#8212;knew what she was doing. I loved the images she came up with. In one section of the script, she wrote about cypress trees that grow in the muck of the Arkansas River, struggling to push toward the light. The idea is &amp;quot;Can you find happiness in your life, in spite of your circumstances?&amp;quot; I committed to doing the film on the spot. GLAMOUR: And what about Bug, which is coming out in December? AJ: I loved Bug for different reasons: It&amp;#x27;s such a strong piece of material, about a lonely, depressed woman who lives in a crappy motel and hooks up with a paranoid schizophrenic. My costar, Michael Shannon, starred in the play&amp;amp;#8212;the director bought the rights immediately after seeing it&amp;amp;#8212;and was phenomenal to work with. GLAMOUR: So how are you feeling at this moment in your life? AJ: It&amp;#x27;s so simple, really: I was unhappy and now I&amp;#x27;m happy. Now, even when I&amp;#x27;m having a rough day, it&amp;#x27;s better than my best day before treatment. The other day I came across a proverb, &amp;quot;It is better to begin in the evening than not at all.&amp;quot; It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter what you&amp;#x27;ve done in the past&amp;amp;#8212;what matters are the choices you make right now. God gives you the chance to start over with every breath."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2006/07/ashley-judd>