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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 Academy Award-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. This brown-haired, brown-eyed actress Hilary Swank found success in Hollywood not long after unpacking her bags. The athletic native of Bellingham, Washington 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 for the coveted lead part of Julie in "The Next Karate Kid" (1994), a role that required her to call on her athletic prowess. It marked her most prominent role to date. Swank was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the daughter of Judy (née Clough), a secretary and dancer, and Stephen Swank, who was an officer in the Air National Guard and later a traveling salesman. She has a brother, Dan. Many of her family members hail from Ringgold County, Iowa. Swank has Spanish and Native American heritage. Swank came from humble beginnings, particularly as a child growing up in a trailer park near Lake Samish in Bellingham, Washington, to which she moved at age six, after having lived in Spokane, Washington. Swank has 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 Swank was nine years old, she made her first appearance on stage starring in The Jungle Book. She became involved in 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 fifth 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 to Los Angeles, 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. In California, Swank enrolled in South Pasadena High School (although she later dropped out of school) and started acting professionally. She helped pay the rent with the money she earned appearing in television programs such as Evening Shade and Growing Pains. A regular on ABC's short-lived series "Camp Wilder" (1992-93), likewise on ABC's even more brief "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 character, Steve. Roles in the straight-to-video releases "Sometimes They Come Back. . . Again" (1994) and "Kounterfeit" (1997), however, did little to raise her profile, nor did her work in the telefilms "Terror in the Family" (Fox, 1996) and "Dying to Belong" (NBC, 1997). 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." Her lack of name recognition aided Swank in landing the career transforming role of Teena Brandon, a Nebraska woman who opts to live as a man, in "Boys Don't Cry" (1999). Based on a true story and beautifully realized by director Kimberly Peirce, the film presented numerous challenges for Swank. Having successfully passed the audition, she cut off her long hair and worked with a trainer to build the requisite muscle. As part of her extensive preparation, she created a male alter ego and spent close to a month living in that persona in Los Angeles, a move that provided the actress with plenty of first-hand research. The onscreen results were astonishing—she conveyed the swagger and fragility of the character, with many praising her performance as one of the year's best. Swank earned many accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Actress. Now one of Hollywood's It girls, Swank fielded numerous offers, opting to take the role of an abused wife in the ensemble of Sam Raimi's Southern Gothic "The Gift" (2000) before undertaking the lead role as a French noblewoman in the period drama "The Affair of the Necklace" (2001). She continued to chose her roles carefully, next appearing in 2002's eerie Alaskan thriller "Insomnia" with Al Pacino and Robin Williams, and directed by Christopher Nolan of “Memento” (2000) fame. She was next seen alongside Aaron Eckhart in the sci-fi thriller "The Core" (2003), a contrived disaster flick about the impending destruction of the earth after its core mysteriously stops rotating. Though trailers were pulled after the Space Shuttle tragedy, the movie would have flopped regardless on its own accord. As it turned out, the firing was a lucky break for Swank, freeing her to audition for the role of Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry. Swank reduced her body fat to seven percent in preparation for the role.Many critics hailed hers as the best female performance of 1999; her co-star, Chloë Sevigny, had her performance singled out as well. Swank's work ultimately won her the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Actress. She subsequently won the Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe again for playing a boxer in Clint Eastwood's 2004 Oscar-winning film Million Dollar Baby, a role for which she underwent training in the ring and gained 19 pounds of muscle. Swank's 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 for Academy Awards twice and win both times. She is the third-youngest double Best Actress winner (after Rainer and Jodie Foster). After winning her second 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 per 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. Swank next costarred in costar in “The Black Dahlia” (2006), Brian De Palma’s take on James Ellroy’s complicated and richly-textured noir thriller about two hard-edged cops (Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart) who descend into obsession, corruption and sexual degeneracy as they investigate the brutal murder of would-be actress Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), who was found tortured and vivisected in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. Swank had the unusual experience of being the femme fatale, playing the seductive Madeleine Linscott, a dead-ringer for Short who becomes the source of wild fascination for one of the detectives. She next starred in “Freedom Writers” (2007) as Erin Gruwell, a dedicated California teacher who unified her disadvantaged, racially-challenged students by having them keep journals about their troubled and often violent lives. Then in “PS, I Love You” (lensed 2006), Swank was a grieving young widow who discovers that her dead husband left a list of tasks delivered in 10 messages in order to help ease her out of grief and into a new life. 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". Swank starred in The Reaping, a horror film released on April 5, 2007, 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 being filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when Hurricane Katrina struck. Swank also appeared in the romantic comedy PS, I Love You alongside Gerard Butler, an actor for whom she has much praise. It was released at the end of 2007. She will have a cameo in Iron Man, a film based on a fictional Marvel Comics character due for release in May 2008. Swank received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday, January 8, 2007. Hers was the 2,325th star presented. Swank, whose physical appearance is frequently compared with Jacqueline Kennedy's, has said that she is "an actor, not a celebrity" and has described herself as a "homebody."Swank considers herself a spiritual person, though, not a member of an organized religion. She has said that she is "athletically inclined" and that she "loves sports." Swank developed potential health problems, including elevated mercury levels in her body, through 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 needs 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 "feels 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 was dating John Campisi, her agent. |
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