The Truth About Ashley Judd's Plastic Surgery Rumors

Ashley Judd has put nearly the same energy into humanitarian causes as she has into her acting career. As a United Nations Population Fund goodwill ambassador since 2016, Judd has gained recognition for her activism regarding gender equality, particularly her defense of sexual and reproductive rights around the world. But feminism isn't a label she embraced recently. Back in 2003, Judd sported a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase "This Is What A Feminist Looks Like" on the cover of Ms. magazine, alongside Whoopi Goldberg, Margaret Cho and Camryn Manheim. 

While the bulk of the "Divergent" star's humanitarian efforts are centered in the developing world, Judd is also active in her home country, where the fight for equality is far from over. In October 2017, Judd became one of the first women to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment amid The New York Times' Pulitzer prize-winning investigation. In her interview, Judd identified the now-disgraced Hollywood producer as the unnamed abuser she had previously described as "one of our industry's most famous, admired-slash-reviled bosses" in a 2015 interview with Variety. Judd contended the episode happened when she was filming the 1997 film "Kiss the Girls." 

In addition to her activism and courage in light of the Weinstein investigations, Judd has also had to fight another widespread issue: misogyny directed at aging female actors. Over the years, Judd has spoken out against the media and public attacks she suffered amid her changing looks, which have raised plenty of speculation about plastic surgery. 

In early 2012, Ashley Judd was on the receiving end of negative media attention over her swollen face, ABC News reported. After she appeared on a Canadian talk show that April, the media speculated Judd had gone under the knife in reports that called her names ranging from "cow" to "pig," she detailed in a Daily Beast piece she penned in response. Judd denied she'd had any plastic surgery, explaining the swelling in her face was a side effect of strong medication, including steroids, she had been taking for over a month to treat an illness. (Her rep told ABC it was a sinus infection).

But regardless of her condition, Judd used her platform to make a broader argument about the media's scrutiny of female actors. "When my 2012 face looks different than it did when I filmed 'Double Jeopardy' in 1998, I am accused of having 'messed up' my face ... with a passionate lament that 'Ashley has lost her familiar beauty audiences loved her for,'" she wrote.

Despite her efforts, she was at it again in 2020, when then-presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren shared a video featuring Judd to Twitter in which her face looked "puffy." Following yet another bout of plastic surgery rumors, Judd took to Facebook to note she receives regular Botox injections for chronic migraines, a condition that also led to weight gain. Once again, Judd was having to relay how none of it is anyone's business.

After dispelling rumors of plastic surgery for years, Ashley Judd was very open about her February 2021 accident that required a very different type of surgery: a life-saving one. While working on a project to protect bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Judd badly shattered her leg after tripping over a fallen tree in the inhospitable African rainforest, she told The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof in an Instagram Live.

It took 55 harrowing hours to reach a medical facility, she detailed on Instagram. Judd lay on the forest floor for five hours, while her local companions immobilized her leg, broken in four places, and cared for her as she went into shock. The men then took turns carrying her out of the jungle in a hammock across dangerous terrain for another couple of hours to return to camp. From there, Judd and two volunteers embarked on a six-hour motorcycle ride as she held her leg in place with the help of the second passenger. 

After more than two days on the road before reaching the Kinshasa airport, Judd arrived in a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. Judd needed a blood transfusion and treatment to reduce the swelling before she could be operated on, she explained in another Instagram post. "I wake up weeping in gratitude, deeply moved by each person who contributed something life-giving and spirit-salving during my grueling 55 hour odyssey," she wrote in the first post.