NEW YORK (AP) — Ashley Judd has recounted a painful ordeal she believes almost cost her leg after
tripping in a Congolese rainforest and having to be evacuated by motorbike.
In one of two Instagram Live videos hosted Friday by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, the actor
said she was stuck on the ground for five hours with a "badly misshapen leg," biting a stick
because of pain, and "howling like a wild animal."
Judd was injured when she and researchers were up early in a rainforest looking for bonobos when she
tripped over a log and the fall shattered her tibia. She was carried out the rainforest in a hammock and
back to camp.
Then she was evacuated by motorbike, with a driver steering and another man "holding the top part of
my shattered tibia together." That trip lasted six hours.
She described it as a "catastrophic accident" and added that she "nearly lost my
leg." She conducted the interview from a hospital bed in South Africa and revealed that if she
wasn’t a famous actor, she thinks she might have lost her leg and her life during the 55-hour ordeal.