Ashley Judd's "Paperback Movie" Trilogy -- They Made Her, They Broke Her

Ashley Judd is whatever she is today, but for a brief period in the 90's and early 00's, she was a star of sorts. Bankable. In leads. She had the makings for stardom both as a sex symbol(great face, great body...an earlier willingness to do nude scenes) and as a serious actress(some indie films, a co-starring role as Val Kilmer's woman in "Heat"). She also had -- as did her famous singing siblings -- a great, sexy voice.

And at her peak, facially she kinda looked like a really sexy chipmunk.

In 1999, she appeared in a Paramount movie called "Double Jeopardy." I do believe it gave her a big hit. And TV commercials went out in which Judd was holding a gun on her evil husband while Significant Supporting Star Tommy Lee Jones(as a cop) sat there saying funny things about how she could kill him with impunity. The commercials were better than the movie, they gave away the climax (if not the end) and..hit.

The plot of Double Jeopardy was that Judd is convicted of her husband's murder(his body has disappeared) and as the story progresses with Judd on the run..she is told that according to "double jeopardy" she can't be convicted of killing him a second time...if she finds him alive and kills him.

The legal underpinnings of the plot were weak, but evidently female audience enjoyed Judd's chase after, hunt of, and final confrontation with her evil husband(not really an "ex"). And the presence of Oscar Winner Tommy Lee Jones gave the movie a bit of gravitas(for sale) and a good actor to play off of.

With gorgeous locations in the Northwest, Denver, and New Orleans, Double Jeopardy had an A-list look -- but it was a B movie at heart. A movie version of the paperbacks you buy at the supermarket to read at the beach. A "paperback movie."

And Ashley Judd made two more of them:

High Crimes...with Morgan Freeman as her A-list Oscar winning male co-star
Twisted ...with Samuel L. Jackson as her A-list Oscar NOMINATED male co-star.

If you look at the posters for three movies -- Double Jeopardy, HIgh Crimes, Twisted...they are pretty much the same. Except Twisted threw in another quality support star - Andy Garcia -- to join Sam Jackson with Judd on THAT poster.

I think the problem is that all three of these "paperback movies" were so poor in the overall writing and characterization, so lightweight, so "Lifetime movie for the big screen" that once they started bombing (High Crimes a little, Twisted a lot)...Ashley Judd's nascent stardom crashed and burned and was never really recovered.

She did a very rough and crazy indie film called " Bug" a couple of years after "Twisted" and that restored her "art cred" but....the brief interlude with above the title stardom was over.

Hollywood can be mean that way.

PS. Judd's "Paperback Trilogy" demonstrated how high quality actors like Tommy Lee Jones, Morgan Freeman, and Sam Jackson operate -- take big bucks to lend their names and their skills to potboilers. Make "important movies" some other time.