Judy, Judy, Judy

Judy Davis has made an entire career out of walking against the wind. From her 1979 breakthrough role in My Brilliant Career as a tum-of-the-century Australian-bush farmer's daughter with her eye on the horizon to the gritty strugglers she played in High Tide, Barton Fink, and Naked Lunch, Davis has radiated the passion and pathos of hope over experience. Which is doubtless why Woody Allen cast her as Sydney Pollack's frustrated wife in this month's Husbands and Wives (a frustration, she hints, that leads to an affair). And why, instead of moving to L.A., she continues to live in her native Australia, married to actor Colin Friel, with whom she has a five-year-old son. L.A., she says, would just be too... easy.

HAL HINSON