This Judd’s for Acting : Unlike her famous mom and sister, Ashley is gaining attention on the big screen. Her already-acclaimed film ‘Ruby in Paradise’ opens next month.

Ashley Judd was featured in the latest of Rolling Stone magazine’s annual “hot” issues as this year’s soon-to-break “hot actress” of choice. But this thermogenic 25-year-old is not the type to celebrate the honor by partying with the Roxbury pack. She’s an unrepentant homebody and homesick Southern expatriate whose biggest social extravagance belies her pre-Malibu roots.

“I do cook well,” Judd admits with disarming immodesty, asked about her famous cakes. “Now that’s how I play. Coming into town, when I don’t have a whole lot of time, I invite the people I want to see over and we have a wonderful dinner party. And I have fresh vegetables Federal-Expressed to me from Tennessee. How spoiled does that sound?”

And who’s overnighting all that unspoiled Nashville produce to our seaside pamperee?

“My mom won’t do it. She’s like ‘Ashley Tyler Judd . . . . ‘ And my sister said, ‘Sure! How many ears of corn do you want? Thirty?’ ”

The reluctant mom, for those who haven’t guessed, is Naomi, which would make Wynonna the cheerfully indulgent sister. Ashley is the younger daughter in the Judds’ female triad, and the one who went Hollywood, as it were. Magazines stricken by her drop-dead-cute looks, obvious acting acumen and great genes have splashed her picture underneath headlines like “Country Girl,” which in some ways Ashley assuredly still is.

She’s also sharp-as-a-tack urbane, as likely to mention novelist Ellen Gilchrist in conversation as singer Vince Gill, and an overachiever since childhood whose breezy, articulate banter doesn’t betray anything so errant as even a dangling participle. Well-prepared as she was to take Hollywood when she moved here three years ago, it’s no wonder her burgeoning movie career is now, as she puts it, “cooking with gas.”

Her candor becomes apparent when you inquire about her acclaimed new movie, “Ruby in Paradise” (opening next month on the art-house circuit), and how she did or perhaps didn’t relate to the title character, a quiet woman who leaves Tennessee to strike out on her own.

“This is where I get out my flash cards,” responds Judd, who just returned from a European press tour. “I’m devising a theory, and it’s probably not a very good one, because I don’t know if I could ever present it and not offend people. But obviously I’m going to be asked that question a lot, and, really, there’s only one truthful answer, right? I’m not going to lie day by day and make up something for the sheer sake of variety. So I think I should write down my answer on a flash card.”

In not answering the question, Judd has conveniently managed to answer the question after all: Unlike Ruby--who starts off with a certain naivete, suffers certain indignities and takes a while to come of age in the film’s Florida resort setting--Judd, weaned on the ways of show business at a young age, is nobody’s fool.

Her current “hotness” is mostly the result of advance screenings of the independent “Ruby,” which won the jury prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Judd toned down her usual gregarious charm to play an introspective woman whose role is largely reactive and whose character arc is communicated as much through meaningful gazes as dialogue. She says she had no reservations about taking on such a subtle part, even though “it’s not a dramatic piece on paper.”

“But I’d never read anything so wonderful,” she says. “It’s my all-time favorite script. I’d been waiting for it since I was in the third grade. Seriously. Everything that’s in it, and the peacefulness and stillness of it, and the time that the characters are given to have true experiences, resonated in me.”

Lest she get too peaceful, her most recent shoot was Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” based on a Quentin Tarantino script, in which she plays the survivor of a serial-killer massacre.

Judd was exposed to the masses as Swoosie Kurtz’s daughter on the TV series “Sisters.” (She and NBC recently reached a “mutually satisfactory” agreement to end her contract, although she’s guest-starring in a few episodes.) When a visitor confesses to not having seen the series, Judd admits she hasn’t either, not owning a TV.

But she does have a radio, of course, which--given the popular ubiquitousness of her closest relations--is about all it takes to make her miss the homestead.

“I’m listening to my sister’s single with Clint (Black). She’s like the best that’s ever been; she really is. Sometimes when I hear her sing, I get so full with my own appreciation and love for her that I have to pull the car over. . . .

“Last night Wy called and she said that she was going out to dinner and to a movie, and that just sounded like the best thing in the world to me.” Suddenly, you notice that Judd has tears rolling down her cheek. “Excuse me, I am very homesick,” she apologizes. “Just to be in Tennessee, and it’s starting to cool down and the farm is so beautiful, and to be in an old car and go out to dinner with my sister, that sounded perfect to me. . . .

“So what did I do instead? I cleaned out the utility drawer in my kitchen,” she laughs, saltily.