More Than Just an Actress: Humanitarian and Scholar Ashley Judd Announces Plans to Pen Memoir

Don't expect this to be your typical tell-all Hollywood tale.

Actress Ashley Judd announced Tuesday that she is penning her memoirs — at the ripe old age of 41 — and the book will not focus only on her big-screen career, but detail how her painful, unstable childhood ultimately led her toward helping vulnerable and abandoned women and children in some of the most difficult locales worldwide. The book is based on more than 500 pages of deeply personal journal entries Judd wrote over the years.

"By sharing my own story along with those of the beautiful and resilient people I've met in the most desperate places, I want to show how the change we seek in the world must start within us," Judd said in a statement released by publisher Ballantine Books, a division of Random House Inc., according to Reuters.

And if you think Judd is exaggerating her contributions, think again. The erstwhile actress has proven she is more than just a pretty face who does some humanitarian work when she has some free time. On the contrary, Judd has practically hung up her acting hat — although she does appear in Tooth Fairy, out this past week — instead choosing to focus on academic and humanitarian interests.

She is currently enrolled in Harvard — yes, the Harvard — working toward a mid-career masters in public administration and remains fully dedicated to causes like her work abroad as a global ambassador for the prevention program Youth AIDS.

Of course, any memoir must detail a subject's roots, and this book will be no exception. When Ashley first entered the public sphere, she was perhaps most famous for being the daughter who wasn't part of The Judds, the mother-daughter country music duo featuring her sister Wynonna and mom Naomi. But there's much more to her story than just that.

According to Reuters, she was treated for depression in 2006 and later told Glamour she attended 13 schools in 12 years and bounced around living with her mother, father and grandmother, experiences that made her "a hyper-vigilant child" and obsessed with perfectionism as an adult.

But now, Judd seems obsessed with doing good. And it appears her memoir, to debut in 2011, is part of her master plan to help and inspire others. We can't wait to read it.

Photo courtesy of United States Embassy (South Africa) via Wikimedia Commons