Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Ashley Judd came back to a filmmaking world that was vastly changed from what she remembered when she started making her upcoming "Missing" series for ABC after a spell away from the cameras.

"With the digital revolution on the set, it takes very little time to change the camera for different setups," she reports. "Everything moves very quickly. I'd be on my way back to my trailer, and they'd say that they were ready." Thus, she says, she "had to be prepared — very emotionally prepared" throughout long and intense shooting days.

"That was actually the biggest adjustment for me," says the erudite star, speaking of jumping into her first television series, "and I think that's more related to the fact that I retired for five years."

Ashley took time away from acting to complete her Masters of Public Administration degree at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government — she attained the degree in 2010 — and to put her energies into an array of humanitarian and social justice causes. She has served as a global ambassador for YouthAIDS. She's campaigned for wildlife preservation. And she has an ongoing mission against gender violence.

When asked what sparked her to change, she recalls that a turning point came "When I found out in 1988 that in the commonwealth of Kentucky at that time, it was still legal for a husband to rape his wife. That was quite a moment — and the law was changed, which is why I read about it in the newspaper. And I'm very proud to say that I'm now working with Dr. Carol Jordan, who is a professor at the Center for Research on Violence Against Women at the University of Kentucky, and who was key in changing that law."

Now Ashley's activist and actress lives will have to coexist. Her series, debuting March 15 on ABC, will be a hit. As you may already be aware, it's a globetrotting action thriller — filmed in real locations, big-screen style, for the small screen — in which she plays a mother trying to find her college student son, who has been abducted in Europe. Ashley pulls off playing her former CIA operative character brilliantly.

IF YOU ASK US: This week's 2012 AARP Movies for Grownups Awards brought out many of Hollywood's brightest luminaries — including Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Martin Scorsese, Kenneth Branagh, Janet McTeer, Alexander Payne and the still-hot Sharon Stone — adding to the elegant event's distinction as an awards-season must.

We applaud AARP's persistent efforts toward breaking through the wall of ageism. Making those efforts in the ageism capital of the world — Hollywood — is particularly noteworthy. Here, ageism is not only accepted and embraced; it is clung to with a ferocity that speaks of barely-hidden terror. (Think Demi Moore.) However, with the graying of the Baby Boom generation and other factors making moviegoers of age 50 and up increasingly important to box office revenue, more filmmakers and stars will be reaching out to the mature crowd. Next, we'd like to see Movies for Grownups on television.

Speaking of the TV side, the standard ratings classifications are statistically archaic — like using a mortar and pestle when you have a Cuisinart — with today's technology offering far more sophisticated and meaningful data-crunching capabilities. (David Poltrack, Chief Research Officer of CBS Corp., has long been trying to educate people about this.) And yet, we continue to see the phrase "the coveted 18-49 demographic" over and over and over again. (Lazy TV writers really should come up with at least one or two different adjectives besides "coveted.") Networks and media continue to quote only the ratings for viewers under age 50. Yet the 55-plus audience reportedly reached 33 percent of the adult population last year. In 2015, it's expected to reach 36 percent. That's a heck of a lot of ignoring.

A DIFFERENT LOOK: Protean actress Parker Posey plays Mary Welsh Hemingway in the May HBO drama "Hemingway & Gellhorn," in which Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman star as Ernest Hemingway and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn.

"I have a wig — a powder blond wig — and blue contacts. It was crazy. I reminded myself of my Aunt Lois," Posey tells us. She also wore "man pants" and went around carrying a cigarette. "I'd love to play another woman in the '50s," she says. "It was fun, just a couple of days' work for me."

Mary was Hemingway's last wife, while wife of five years Gellhorn, who inspired him to write "For Whom the Bell Tolls," is considered the love of his life despite their divorce.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2012 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH
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