Ashley Judd Thanks Husband for 'Beautiful Storm' Essay Inspiration

Ashley Judd has blamed her "amazing" husband, race car driver Dario Franchitti, for prompting her to attack critics online for writing mean things about her appearance.

RELATED: Ashley Judd Fires Back at Puffy Face Gibes

The actress was appalled when bloggers and journalists -- many of them female -- took aim at her when she appeared on TV with a puffy face, the result of steroid medication she was on to fight off a bad cold.

Her critics claimed the new look was the result of cosmetic surgery and they quoted experts who backed their opinions up, stating the actress had clearly had "fillers" put in her face.

Judd's publicist quickly dismissed the reports, but they refused to go away, and so the star's angry husband suggested she do something to get back at the careless gossips.

Judd put pen to paper and wrote an essay about the nastiness inherent in today's media, calling out the bloggers behind the cosmetic surgery claims for their sexist and mean remarks. It was published on news website The Daily Beast, and has become a defining piece of literature for modern feminists.

RELATED: Read Ashley Judd's Full Daily Beast Essay

And Judd owes the "beautiful storm" to her husband.

She tells "Access Hollywood Live," "It was very much nudged by my husband, who was so outraged on my behalf. ... It's all his fault. The feedback on the conversation has been nothing short of extraordinary. I had absolutely no idea when I sat in my nightgown ... and channelled that piece, which took me maybe 18 to 20 minutes to transcribe. Once I made the connection and grasped the double bind and the contradictions and the 'She looks good, it must be fake,' 'She looks bad, it must be fake' all talking about the same woman and the same appearance ... the piece came to me and I just wrote it because it was there. I didn't event have an outcome in mind. I sent it to some friends as I usually do and one of them said, 'This is so powerful, it has to be an op-ed (piece).'

She added, "I've never been at the center of something like this ... I was just a surrogate for this particular series of unbelievably sexist and nasty criticisms ... If it were just about me it would have sort of died within a 24-hour news cycle."