With one Best Actress Oscar already on her mantle (“Boys Don’t Cry”) and a Golden Globe nomination for her mesmerizing performance in “Million Dollar Baby,” it’s clear Hilary Swank has come a long way from her early days in L.A. when she was 16 and living inside her car.
“How lucky am I?” Swank asked rhetorically, of working with Clint Eastwood (he plays her trainer, Frankie Dunn) and co-star Morgan Freeman. “I actually joked saying, ‘God, where do you go from here? I might need to retire.’”
Swank said she identified with Fitzgerald more than any character she’s ever played.
“I grew up in a trailer park, she grew up in a trailer park,” she said. “I was this young girl who had a dream, and I was determined and driven and focused. I have that connection with Maggie because Maggie has a line in the movie where she says, ‘This is the only thing I have felt good doing.’ This (acting) is the only thing I ever felt good doing.”
Swank threw herself into the preparation for her role as Fitzgerald, a struggling but determined boxer. Swank is no stranger to pushing herself physically — she swam in the Junior Olympics and ranked fifth in Washington state for gymnastics — but she found out quickly that boxing would test her mettle. Training for three months prior to shooting the film, Swank worked out four and a half hours a day.
“Boxing is the most intense workout you can ever experience,” Swank said, adding she gained 19 pounds of muscle.
Swank, who would like to focus on motherhood in the upcoming years with husband Chad Lowe, said that while “Boys Don’t Cry” lifted her into the spotlight, she’d like to be cast in a comedy, where she started her career. “(Producers) come to me to with (dramatic roles) because the movie they know me from was so intense and so serious.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 17, 2004. Read the original PDF.