The actress previously accused disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein of sexually harassing her during the production of the 1997 thriller.

Ashley Judd explains her complex feelings about Kiss the Girls ‘making entertainment out of sexual terror’

The actress previously accused disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein of sexually harassing her during the production of the 1997 thriller.

By Shania Russell

Shania Russell

Shania Russell is a news writer at *, *with five years of experience. Her work has previously appeared in SlashFilm and Paste Magazine.

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March 9, 2026 3:38 p.m. ET

Ashley Judd now and in 1997's 'Kiss the Girls'. Credit:

Ashley Judd/Instagram; Paramount/Courtesy Everett

Ashley Judd is opening up about her complicated relationship to the movie that changed her life.

In a Sunday Instagram video, the acclaimed actress decided to give the people what they want: an in-depth discussion about her 1997 thriller, *Kiss the Girls*.

"You keep asking about *Kiss the Girls,* so we're gonna talk about *Kiss The Girls*," Judd told followers at the start of the lengthy upload. "Thank you for loving the movie, thank you for loving me in it. Thank you for making it such a— I was gonna say pivotal but I would even say a transformative moment in my career."

Judd went on to recount various happy memories tied to the production of the Gary Fleder-directed thriller, including a set visit from her grandfather, getting a chocolate cake delivered to her trailer for her birthday, and shooting alongside the likes of Cary Elwes and Morgan Freeman. Then, she delved into her difficult feelings about the film's plot and dialogue.

"I want to talk about the movie in a way that has become more clear to me over the years, and I invite you to consider [this] for yourself. It's okay to love the movie and come up to me and say it's your favorite movie," Judd began, before sharing that she has recently been contemplating "why filming male sexual violence" and "torture of the female body" is considered entertaining.

Ashley Judd in 'Kiss the Girls'.

Courtesy Everett

She added, "Some of that dialogue, which I would literally cringe at if I ever watched the movie in a theater or anything, very misogynistic dialogue. Excruciatingly not okay."

Based on the 1995 James Patterson novel of the same name, *Kiss the Girls *follows forensic psychologist Alex Cross (Freeman) as he investigates the disappearance of his niece and her connection to an insane killer known as "Casanova." Meanwhile, Judd stars as Kate McTiernan, a doctor who is kidnapped and imprisoned by the deranged killer before her eventual escape. Though the film was not nearly as explicit as the book, which went into graphic detail about the sexual violence and horrors experienced by Casanova's victims, it focuses on much of the same material.

Judd, who was a significant voice in Hollywood's #MeToo movement and has identified herself as a rape survivor, went on to acknowledge that some fans have praised the film as a "resilience" narrative, but added, "It's the resilience after male sexual violence. It's resilience after male sexual torture of the female body and I go… why is that entertainment? Why is that a capitalist enterprise? Why do we create entertainment and earn money off of such a subject?"

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She continued, "So we're valorizing my resilience — Kate's resilience — in the movie but we're not necessarily critiquing or wrestling with or holding at arms' length why."

Towards the end of the video, she said, "The movie is about trauma, and it *is* traumatizing… To me, this is not entertainment. It's collective denial… and making entertainment out of sexual terror."

Judd was one of the first actors to publicly accuse disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. In the bombshell 2017 *New York Times *report, Judd alleged that Weinstein sexually harassed her in a hotel room during the production of* Kiss the Girls*. She filed a defamation and sexual harassment lawsuit against him the following year. In 2019, a California judge dismissed Judd's claim of sexual harassment but allowed her to pursue her defamation claim that Weinstein sabotaged her career.

Ashley Judd in 2024.

Arturo Holmes/Getty

The actress reiterated her feelings about the movie in the video's caption, admitting that her perspective on the story has "evolved quite significantly over the years." She shared that while* Kiss the Girls* ultimately "changed the trajectory" of her career and remains connected to "so many good memories," she can't help but ask big questions about its content when reflecting on the project now.

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"The feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon once said something that shifted my thinking: 'Resilience fundamentally means there is something from which to be resilient,'" Judd wrote. "That stayed with me. What does it mean that we celebrate resilience, but rarely interrogate the violence that made resilience necessary in the first place?"

She concluded, "So today I hold *Kiss the Girls *in a more complicated way—with gratitude for what it meant in my life and career, affection for the people I worked with, and curiosity about what the story represents in our culture. Growing up sometimes means learning to hold things with a little more perspective."

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