The advice method is not called because Action class was extending from ActionSupport class which in turn has a interface implementations... So , in this case, A JDK proxy was created for the Action class -- This type of proxy doesn't have any method specific(non-inheritance) to the Action class.
Adding proxy-target-class="true" attribute, in the AOP configuration, made the Spring to generate CGLib(need to add CGLib in the Classpath) based proxy.. which now has the non-inheritance methods too, of the Action class.