Ashley Judd accuses mom of neglect

LOS ANGELES, April 5 (UPI) -- Hollywood actress Ashley Judd claims in a new memoir her mother, Naomi Judd, neglected her while she was pursuing her country music career.

RadarOnline posted excerpts from the book "All That Is Bitter & Sweet," which went on sale Tuesday.

"My mother, while she was transforming herself into the country legend Naomi Judd, created an origin myth for the Judds that did not match my reality," the younger Judd wrote in her book. "She and my sister [Wynonna] have been quoted as saying that our family put the 'fun' in dysfunction. I wondered: 'Who, exactly, was having all the fun? What was I missing?'"

The 42-year-old "Kiss the Girls" and "Someone Like You" actress went on to say her father, whom her mother divorced when she was a child, "was prone to taking hallucinogenics with friends" on Saturday nights.

She also said after her parents' divorce her mother moved into the Judd family home a boyfriend with an "abusive full-blown heroin addict with a criminal record."

"I was taught to believe that our lifestyle was normal and never to question it or complain, even when I was left alone for hours, sometimes days at a time, or when I was passed without warning to yet another relative," Ashley Judd wrote. "I loved my mother, but at the same time I dreaded the mayhem and uncertainty that followed her everywhere ... I often felt like an outsider observing my mom's life as she followed her own dreams."