A winsome actress with an earthy vitality, Ashley Judd made a splash in the 1993 independent film 'Ruby in Paradise'. She went on to star in action dramas like 'Heat' (1995, with Robert DeNiro), 'A Time to Kill' (1996, with Sandra Bullock), and 'Double Jeopardy' (1999, with Tommy Lee Jones), along with feel-good flicks like 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood' (2002, again with Bullock).

Judd is from a celebrity family: her mother Naomi and older sister Wynonna were the country music combo The Judds, and Wynonna has had a successful solo career. Ashley Judd married auto racer Dario Franchitti in December of 2001.

Judd's latest movie project is the biopic of songwriter Cole Porter (Kevin Kline), 'De-Lovely'. The film focuses on the composer's unusual arrangement with his wife, Linda Lee — Porter was gay — and is told partly in the style of a musical stage show. Linda Lee served as an inspiration for Cole's love songs, even though they didn't have a traditional romantic relationship.

Ashley Judd is close to an hour late for her scheduled round of her interviews promoting her role in the aforementioned 'De-Lovely' and why? Well, as she tells our media gathering very matter-of-factly, she had been bathing her dogs!

As we begin, Judd begins our interview somewhat defensively when it is suggested that the role of Linda Porter in 'De-Lovely' is such a far cry from the more woman-in-danger character we have seen her play far too often. "It's a little irritating, in a weird way, that they're the movies that people pay the most attention too, while no one ever asks me about 'Someone Like You' which I think I worked really hard in. Even though it didn't turn out exactly the way we thought it would. I'm certainly very proud of what I did as well as 'Where the Heart' Is and all that stuff. So I think there's actually a really balanced mix there."

Yet whether she likes it or not, the movie business remains one of perception, and the commercial thrillers in which she starred maintained her relatively high profile. With that in mind, there is an assumption that Judd needed to have fought to play Linda Porter, a complex, evolving character, but Judd says there was no fighting involved. "I didn't have to fight for it but was fortunate in that the director liked me for it after I met him. It was a very pleasant experience because it was already well under way so I didn't have to wait all that long before it started. They'd already talked to Mr Armani about the clothes and had all their locations settled, so it was really nice. I just kind of came in and everything was prepared and off we went," she says smilingly.

Judd says she was always a fan of Cole Porter, and his music era in general. "I like all the music of the 'American Songbook', as I call it, and I'm a big fan of the jazz age in general, so any artefact of that era is interesting to me." Judd says that she would have been more than happy growing up throughout the Porter era. "That whole lack of underclothing thing would have worked well for me, you know, busting out of x number of centuries of clothes. You just think about 'Little Women' and how the mother lets her children run and the whole reason women used to faint at dances and stuff was because they were so corseted they couldn't breathe deeply enough into their lungs. It's so preposterous."

In this day and age of special effects and comic strips-turned-movies, Judd says there is a lesson to be drawn seeing 'De-Lovely'. "That melody is a dying art and that this music is an incredibly important part of our collective cultural consciousness. Also, it's not just about meeting someone, being attracted and having hot monogamous sex for the rest of your life, but it's about stuff that's a lot more subtle and very powerful."

Judd says that she also found it easy to identify with Linda Porter without being overly specific. "Something that I've not found elsewhere, in a screen play or in a book, is that I've had the privilege of being close to a lot of really talented people, either being at the knee of or rubbing elbows with, or marrying someone who had an exceedingly special and very rare kind of talent and I just loved that about it. It's a very comfortable place for me to be," Judd admits.

That comfort zone she refers to is further exemplified through her marriage to racing car driver Dario Franchitti. The couple essentially calls Scotland home, and Judd says she had no problems making that decision. "Whether thou goest, I shall follow," is Judd's response. Ferociously guarded about her privacy, the actress won't divulge in which part of Scotland they live. "I can't actually talk about where we live. It's bad enough over there that if I say one thing, however general, it is extrapolated and reporters show up at my mother and father-in-law's," she says, with vehement bitterness, claiming the Scottish media overreacts to the couple. "I think the problem with the media there, in addition to everyone being consumed by this unfortunate modern crisis of excess interest in public people's private lives, is that there are so many newspapers, and they're all dailies so all the tabloids that we have that operate on a weekly basis operate there on a daily basis, plus there are three or four times the number, so they just need a lot of stuff to fill their shit sheets." Judd becomes more visibly annoyed when asked about her worst paparazzi experience. "I don't even want to talk about it because I don't want to give that any energy. I don't read it, listen to it, nor do I let other people talk about it in front of me, and I just don't want to, so forget it."

Judd, who was also seen in the critically maligned thriller 'Twisted' earlier this year, is more than happy spending her non-acting days either in Tennessee, or more importantly, with her husband in Scotland, emphasising her need of her own personal reality which is not Hollywood. "We live in Tennessee which is great and I just like being there because it's where my husband's from. I'm one of those people who have really taken on what's important to her partner, I'm happy for him, and can see him, come alive in a different way. There, he just so enjoys running into people that he has known all his life, which just means the world to him, plus it's a very beautiful and interesting place."