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Hilary Ann Swank (born July 30, 1974) is
a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress. Her
Hollywood film career began with a small part in Buffy
the Vampire Slayer (1992) and then a major part in The
Next Karate Kid (1994), where she played Julie Pierce,
the first female protégé of the sensei Mr. Miyagi. She
has become known for her two Oscar-winning performances:
first as Brandon Teena, a transgender man in the movie
Boys Don't Cry, and a struggling waitress-turned-boxer,
Maggie Fitzgerald, in Million Dollar Baby.
Early life: Swank was born in Lincoln, Nebraska
to Stephen Swank, an officer in the Air National Guard
and later a traveling salesman, and Judy Clough. She has
a brother, Dan. Many of her family members hail from
Ringgold County, Iowa. Swank came from humble
beginnings, particularly as a child growing up in a
trailer park near Lake Samish in Bellingham, Washington,
where she moved to when she was six. Swank has also
described her younger self as an "outsider"
who felt that she belonged "only when [reading] a
book or [seeing] a movie, and could get involved with a
character", and was thus inspired to become an
actress.
When she was nine years old, Swank made her first
appearance on stage starring in The Jungle Book, and
thereafter became heavily involved in her school and
community theater programs, including those of the
Bellingham Theatre Guild. She went to Sehome High School
in Bellingham until she was sixteen. Swank also competed
in the Junior Olympics and the Washington State
championships in swimming; she ranked 5th in the state
in all-around gymnastics (which would come in handy when
starring in The Next Karate Kid (1994) years later).
Swank's parents separated when she was
thirteen, and her mother, supportive of her daughter's
desire to act, moved the two of them to Los Angeles,
California, where they lived out of their car until
Swank's mother saved enough money to rent an apartment.
Swank has described her mother as the inspiration for
her acting career and her life during this time period
and subsequently. In California, Swank enrolled in South
Pasadena High School (although she later dropped out of
high school) and started acting professionally. She also
helped pay the rent with the money she earned appearing
in television programs such as Evening Shade and Growing
Pains.
Career: In September 1997, Swank was cast as
single mother Carly Reynolds on Beverly Hills, 90210.
She was initially promised it would be a two-year role,
but saw her character written out after 16 episodes in
January 1998. Swank later said that she was devastated
at being cut from the show, thinking, "If I'm not
good enough for 90210, I'm not good enough for
anything." As it turned out, the firing was the
best thing to happen to Swank, as it freed her to
audition for the role of Brandon Teena in Boys Don't
Cry.
Swank dropped her body fat down to seven
percent in preparation for the role. Many critics hailed
hers as the best female performance of 1999; her co-star
of the film, Chloë Sevigny, had her performance singled
out for praise also, Swank and Sevigny were often ranked
as the best two leads of 1999 in film. The performance
ultimately won her the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best
Actress. She subsequently won the Best Actress Oscar
again for playing a boxer in 2004's Million Dollar Baby,
a role for which she underwent training and gained 19
pounds of muscle.
Swank's Oscar success meant that she had joined the
ranks of Vivien Leigh, Helen Hayes, Sally Field, and
Luise Rainer as the only actresses to have been
nominated twice and win both times (both times she won
over fellow actress and nominee Annette Bening). She is
also the third-youngest double Best Actress Oscar winner
(after Luise Rainer and Jodie Foster.) After winning her
second Best Actress Oscar, she said, "I don't know
what I did in this life to deserve this. I'm just a girl
from a trailer park who had a dream." Swank had
earned only $75/day for her work on Boys Don't Cry,
culminating in a total of $3,000. Her earnings were so
low, that (according to an anecdote on 60 Minutes) she
had not even earned enough to qualify for health
insurance.
She grew up in Bellingham, Washington and as a child,
devoted much of her time to athletic pursuits. Swank
swam in the Junior Olympics, state championships and
ranked fifth in her state for gymnastics. At the age of
sixteen, Swank moved to Los Angeles to realize her dream
of becoming an actress. She moved to Los Angeles when
she was 16 and soon landed a guest starring role on the
syndicated "Harry and the Hendersons". She
then played recurring characters on both "Evening
Shade" (CBS) and "Growing Pains" (ABC)
during the 1991-92 season before making her feature
debut as Kristy Swanson's Valley Girl pal in "Buffy
the Vampire Slayer" (1992).
Swank beat out thousands of actresses
coast to coast for the coveted lead part of Julie in
"The Next Karate Kid" (1994), a role that
required her to call on her athletic prowess and marked
her most prominent role to that time. A regular on ABC's
short-lived series "Camp Wilder" (1992-93),
likewise on ABC's even briefer "Leaving L.A."
(1997), Swank gained some notice when she joined the
cast of Fox's popular "Beverly Hills, 90210"
in 1997 playing a single mom who served as a love
interest for Ian Ziering's Steve. Her career
transforming role of Teena Brandon, a Nebraska woman
undergoing a "sexual identity crisis" who opts
to live as a man, in "Boys Don't Cry" (1999)
earned numerous accolades.
Predictably, Swank's workload increased significantly
after her Oscar win in 2001, and the actress found
herself starring in several lesser known but nonetheless
challenging roles, including Sam Raimi's psychological
thriller "The Gift" (2001), as well as
"The Affair of the Necklace" with then future
Oscar winner Adrien Brody. Swank also co-narrated the
Barbra Streisand-produced documentary "Reel Models:
The First Women of Film", and would take on gender
equality issues once again in HBO's "Iron Jawed
Angels"(2003), which featured Swank, Anjelica
Houston, and Frances O'Connor as leaders in the women's
suffrage movement.
However, Swank did take a break from
brooding period pieces and serious explorations of
sexuality for one unapologetic big-budget summer
blockbuster -- Jon Amiel's "The Core" (2003),
in which Swank co-starred as one of several individuals
chosen to journey to the Earth's core in hopes of
jump-starting the collapsing electromagentic forces. She
also accepted a supporting role as an eager-to-please
rookie detective alongside Hollywood veteran Al Pacino
and Robin Williams in 2002's "Insomnia".
In early 2006, Swank signed a three-year contract as
spokesperson for Guerlain (a women's fragrance). In
2007, Swank starred in and executive produced Freedom
Writers, a drama about a real-life teacher who inspired
a California high school class. Many reviews of Swank's
performance were positive, with one critic noting that
she "brings credibility" to the role and
another stating that her performance reaches a
"singular lack of artifice, stripping herself back
to the bare essentials".
Later the same year, Swank starred The
Reaping, a horror film scheduled for an April 5 release,
in which she plays a debunker of religious phenomena.
Swank convinced the producers to move the film's setting
from New England to the Deep South, and the movie was
filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina
struck. Swank has also completed filming on the romantic
comedy PS, I Love You. Swank received a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday, January 8, 2007. Hers
was the 2,325th star given.
Personal life: Swank has said that she is
"an actor, not a celebrity" and has described
herself as a "homebody". She considers herself
a spiritual person, though not a member of an organized
religion. She has said that she is "athletically
inclined" and that she "love[s] sports".
Swank developed potential health problems, including
elevated mercury levels in her body, because of certain
preparations for her roles, including weight gain and
loss for Boys Don't Cry and The Black Dahlia.
She has stated that she would "do
what [she] need[s] to make [the role] believable and to
make it work" and that her "battle scars are a
reminder that you're alive and human and that you
bleed". In 2007, Swank noted that she "feel[s]
like in the last couple of years I’ve really come into
my own and a lot of that has come from figuring out who
I really am and what I want in life".
Swank married actor Chad Lowe on September 28, 1997. The
two met in 1992, on the set of Quiet Days in Hollywood,
a direct-to-video film. Swank infamously forgot to thank
Lowe during her acceptance speech after winning her
first Oscar in 2000, and she spent nearly every public
appearance afterward making up for it. Upon winning her
second Oscar in 2005, Lowe was the first person she
thanked. However, in January 2006, the couple separated.
In subsequent interviews, Swank expressed hope that they
could reconcile, but they announced in May 2006 that
they were divorcing. In December 2006, Swank confirmed
that she is dating John Campisi, her agent.
On January 15, 2005, after arriving at a New Zealand
airport, she was fined NZ$230 by the Manukau District
Court for not declaring an apple and orange she had in
her purse when she landed. Swank appealed the fine, but
it was upheld on March 30, 2005. |
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