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Biography
Hilary Swank's early roles did not bode
well for a future career as a "serious" actress. Making her
screen debut in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, then headlining in the third
sequel to The Karate Kid before winding up in that thespian graveyard
Beverly Hills 90120, she was surely destined for artistic oblivion. Even
after winning an Oscar for her extraordinary performance as the doomed
cross-dresser Teena Brandon in Boys Don't Cry she was immediately
forgotten by the public, most of whom never saw that notoriously "difficult"
movie.
So it was a surprise to most when, in
2004, she made a sudden and decisive return in Clint Eastwood's
multi-nominated Million Dollar Baby, an Oscar-winning comeback supported
by a very high-profile modeling assignment for Calvin Klein. Clearly
that first Oscar had been no fluke - Swank's abilities could no longer
be denied.
Of Spanish and Native American extraction, Hilary Ann Swank was born on
the 30th of July, 1974 in . . . well, therein lies a question. Reports
have been severely confused by the audition process for Boys Don't Cry.
In order to win the confidence of director Kimberly Peirce, Swank told
her that, like the real Teena Brandon, she was 21 and had been born in
Lincoln, Nebraska. In fact, she claimed, she'd be born in the same
hospital. Later, Peirce would discover that Swank had lied and
confronted her, with Swank cheekily (and quite correctly) replying that
that's exactly what Brandon would have done. The part was hers, but the
lies caused problems for biographers. Swank was certainly not 21, she
was 24.
As for her birthplace, her management
maintained that she was indeed born in Lincoln. Swank herself would
often refer to herself as a mid-Western girl, and state that one of her
grandfathers was born and raised in Iowa, just two hours drive from
Falls City, Nebraska, the small town where Teena Brandon disastrously
went to start a new life.
What's sure is that Hilary's father was
employed by the airborne National Guard and, when Hilary was still
pre-school, took his family - wife Judy, a secretary and later an
executive, and son James - to live in Bellingham, Washington. With a
population of 60,000, this was the closest sizeable American town to the
Canadian border, nearer to Vancouver than Seattle. It was a beautiful
spot, set between the sea and the Cascade Mountains, looking out to the
San Juan Islands in the bay.
Soon, her father would change jobs. Deciding there was money to be had
dealing in trailers, when Hilary was 6 he shifted the family into a
trailer-park and began life as a traveling salesman, now operating
mostly as an absent father. Attending Sehome High School (known for
their aggressive but absurd Sehome Fight Song), young Hilary would excel
at sports, particularly in the gym and pool. Indeed, as a swimmer she
would compete in the Junior Olympics, while as an all-round gymnast
she'd come fifth at the Washington State Championships.
But, despite her excellence in these physical disciplines, Hilary had a
greater love . . . acting. When she was 8, one of her teachers had asked
her class to write a skit then stand up and act it out. Swank had found
the experience revelatory and, by the age of 9 was starring as Mowgli in
a production of The Jungle Book (not the last time she would
successfully pose as a boy). From then on, she would be a regular in
school plays and local theatre, eventually being named Best Junior
Actress by the Bellingham Theatre Guild. She would be constantly
reprimanded by her mother for staring at people and mimicking their
actions and expressions.
Despite the accolades, her school-life was not all plain sailing. As
most of her schoolmates sprang from a higher social class - at least,
they did not live in trailer parks - she would take a fair degree of
abuse. Later, she would recall one incident when a group of her supposed
friends ran past her and threw a screwed-up letter at the back of her
head. On the bus home she was horrified to read the words "You
think you're so cool, but you're not. You think you're so pretty, but
you're ugly. You think you're so talented, but you suck". God only
knows what her enemies might have written.
With her heart set on an acting career, Hilary was now to be lent a hand
by ill-fortune. Her parents' marriage had been turning sour for some
considerable time and, with Hilary now 15 and James old enough to cope,
they separated. As Judy had just lost her job, she found herself at a
major crossroads in her life. She had nothing in Bellingham, so she
decided to seek a new life in Los Angeles, where Hilary might also ply
her desired trade. So, with $75 between them, the pair took off for
California in Judy's Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.
To begin with, it was far from easy. All
down the coast and for the first two weeks in LA they slept in the car.
Living off Judy's Mobil card, they spent much of their time in
coffeeshops and automats at Mobil stations. Soon a friend would provide
a roof over their heads, but this was in a house in the process of being
sold. With viewers due each day, Judy and Hilary would have to vacate it
each morning, making sure no one would suspect they'd been there.
Quickly, both of their main aims were achieved. Judy found employment
and Hilary found an agent. She enrolled at South Pasadena High School,
then Santa Monica City College but, with work coming her way, she'd drop
out of High School altogether, completing her education by mail and with
a succession of tutors. Her onscreen career began inauspiciously enough,
in 1991, with a brief appearance in Harry And The Hendersons, concerning
a Pacific Northwestern family with a comic secret - they have a
seven-foot sasquatch for a pet.
By the end of the year, though, her CV
would have expanded to include Evening Shade, where she'd cause chaos by
eloping with the son of Burt Reynolds' retired Pittsburgh Steelers
quarterback, and Growing Pains, where she'd laugh off the amorous
intentions of Ben Seaver, one member of the starring Long Island family.
Joining her on the credits for this, the seventh series of Growing
Pains, would be a young actor brought in to boost the show's falling
ratings by playing troubled Luke Brower. Fourteen years later, in 2005,
both he and Swank would be Oscar-nominated as Best Actor and Best
Actress respectively. He was Leonardo DiCaprio.
1992 would see Hilary make her Silver Screen entrance in Buffy The
Vampire Slayer (which also saw the brief debut of Ben
Affleck), playing one of star Kirsty Swanson's Valley Girl buddies,
who pour scorn on the heroine for ignoring the trivial things in life
and choosing to save the world instead. Her character, Kimberly Hannah,
would have one of the movie's finest lines, the classic dismissal
"That's SO five minutes ago".
She'd then move on to more TV with Camp
Wilder, positioned in one of ABC's renowned Friday night family-fun
spots, but still a one-season failure. This would see Mary Page Keller
return home after her parents' deaths, to raise both her own young
daughter and her two teenage siblings.
Hilary would play one of the best friends
of Keller's sarcastic sister Melissa, who'd often hang out round the
house as her own parents were always arguing. Though a comedy (Jay Mohr
would appear as an entertainingly eccentric friend of the family), the
show would cover many teen problems, Hilary at one point considering
whether to have sex with cool new kid Jared Leto.
With her TV career on the up, Swank would
now meet the love of her life. This was Chad Lowe, brother of the
infamous Rob. This was in 1992, when Lowe was starring as HIV-positive
Jesse McKenna in ABC's series Life Goes On (for which he'd win an Emmy
in 1993). They'd hook up at an industry party and remain more or less
inseparable from then on, arranging their filming schedules so they
could stay together. They'd marry in 1997.
Onscreen, 1994 saw Hilary appear in Cries Unheard: The Donna Yakkich
Story (also known as Victim Of Rage). Here ex-Charlie's Angel Jaclyn
Smith got married to a cop, only to have her dreams of security
shattered when he becomes obsessed with weight-lifting, steroids turning
him into a psycho. Hilary would play Smith's step-daughter, who raises
suspicions that her dad may have killed his first wife. The same year
would come her first starring role, in The Next Karate Kid.
This saw her step into the shoes of Ralph
Macchio, as surly teen Julie Pierce who, her parents dead, is forced to
live with her grandmother. Fortunately, she's taken on by the
franchise's guru, Pat Morita, whose life her dad saved decades before,
and he takes her off to a Buddhist temple for training in martial arts
and, naturally, the waltz, enabling her to both bash up fascist bullies
at school and score big at the prom. Her gymnastic abilities would, of
course, stand her in good stead.
Though The Next Karate Kid was not a hit, her headline billing did at
least allow her to become a little more prolific. 1996 saw her move on
to the key role in the TV movie Terror In The Family, which reunited her
with Joanna Kerns, Growing Pains' Mrs Seaver. Here Kerns played an
alcoholic mother with a dentist husband, Hilary standing out as her
increasingly aggressive daughter. As the situation worsens, the
bickering turns to violence as Swank beats Kerns and repeatedly slams
her father's hand in a door. Eventually she pulls a knife and is jailed,
before a redemption of sorts is achieved.
The same year would contain two more cinematic appearances. First there
was the Stephen King sequel Sometimes They Come Back . . . Again, where
Michael Gross returned to his hometown with daughter Hilary to bury his
mother, who has died mysteriously. Enter Alexis Arquette, who proceeds
to charm Swank, much to Gross's horror as Arquette was one of a gang to
took part in the ritual slaying of Gross's sister years before. Beyond
this, Arquette is known to be dead. And soon, amidst much gore, so are
many of Hilary's friends.
With very little going for it, the movie
went straight to video. Her next effort did not fare much better. This
was Kounterfeit, a low-budget crime drama which saw petty crooks trying
to exchange dodgy dollars for the real thing. As ever, the deal goes
horribly wrong and an undercover cop is killed. And now Swank, the cop's
sister, goes seeking her own hardcore justice, only to find that the
good guys and bad guys are not always what they seem.
1997 would see a real rush of activity. It would begin with another TV
movie, Dying To Belong, which would attempt to explore the darker side
of college sorority culture. Hilary would star as a student carrying out
a personal investigation into the death of a friend who died during a
"hazing" incident. As a matter of interest, when banning the
activity, "hazing" was said by the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania to include "whipping, beating, branding, forced
calisthenics, exposure to the elements, forced consumption of food,
liquor, drugs etc" as well as "sleep deprivation, forced
exclusion from social contact and forced conduct that could result in
extreme embarrassment". It's amazing any students survive, really.
Hilary would move on to another disappointment in the short-lived TV
series Leaving LA. This was a drama-comedy set in the Los Angeles County
Coroner's Office and saw the team investigating a series of strange
deaths, including that of a man who drowned in a vat of chocolate, and a
car-crash involving a group of Elvis impersonators. The show would
feature future TV stars Melina Kanakaredes (Providence) and Ron Rifkin
(Alias), with Hilary popping up as an office clerk.
Sadly, Leaving LA lasted only six episodes. Hilary, though, had plenty
still going on. She next appeared in another TV movie, The Sleepwalker
Killing, where Charles Esten turned himself into the cops claiming that
he thinks he killed his mother-in-law during a somnabulist episode - but
he can't be sure, as he was asleep. The situation's complicated by the
fact that Esten's a gambling addict with huge debts and has already
stolen $30,000 from his wife, played by Hilary. Thus Swank was handed a
central and complex role as she must decide whether to back her traumatized
family or fight for her husband's freedom. She was a great success in
this, her first truly adult role.
Her only cinema release of 1997 was the oddity Quiet Days In Hollywood,
which saw her unite onscreen with her longtime boyfriend and soon-to-be
husband Chad Lowe. The movie was basically a circular chain of stories,
each linked by a character from one having some form of sex with a
character from the next. Infidelity, betrayal, theft and prostitution
were on the cards, with Lowe playing a yuppie rapist and Swank starting
and ending proceedings as a Hollywood hooker.
The year would end with yet another
disappointment in a TV series. Well, actually, two. Having lost out in
auditions to play Lucy Hatcher in The Practice (Marla Sokoloff took the
part), she won a role in the ever-popular Beverly Hills 90210, joining
the show in October, 1997. With the main players now out of college and
seeking employment and happiness in the outside world, she'd play Carly
Reynolds, a single mum who loses her waitress job after a run-in with
Steve and his date.
Luckily, Steve rather fancies her, sets
her up with a new job at the Peach Pit and sets about wooing her. Of
course, being Beverly Hills 90210, there's problems. He must forge a
relationship with her child, then she loses the child in the mall, and
another woman shows up claiming Steve is the father of her baby. High
drama, indeed, with Hilary finally moving away to Montana to look after
her father, who's suffered a heart attack.
Written out of the show in January, 1998, after just three brief months,
Hilary was mortified. If she couldn't cut the mustard in Beverly Hills
90210, what chance did she have of ever being seen as a
"serious" actress? In fact, her sacking turned out to be a
blessing as within two weeks she was auditioning for the movie that
would prove her breakthrough, Boys Don't Cry. The omens were good, she
thought, on discovering that the director was to be Kimberly Peirce.
After all, she'd played a character called Kimberly in the Buffy movie
and Julie Pierce in The Next Karate Kid. Despite, or perhaps because of
the lies she told about her age and birthplace, she was hired to play
Teena Brandon.
First, though, came 1998's Heartwood, a tale from a small Californian
town where mill-owner Jason Robards is risking bankruptcy because he
refuses to exploit the surrounding forests. Hilary shows up as the
daughter of the mill's new manager and is immediately hit upon by the
town Lothario, as well as becoming the love object of young Eddie Mills,
a slacker-type who spends much of his time in the woods. When Mills
makes an astounding discovery, he and she then struggle to save both the
mill and the town. It was, as it sounds, a feel-good Capra-esque story
of sacrifice and human decency.
And then, in 1999, came Boys Don't Cry. To prepare for the role, she
worked closely with acting coach Larry Mills, a former pupil of the
renowned Stella Adler, who'd helped Helen Hunt to an Oscar for As Good
As It Gets and would perform similar duties for Michael Clarke Duncan
(for The Green Mile) and Swank's former co-star Leonardo DiCaprio (for
The Aviator). She'd been introduced to him by her husband Chad, who'd
attended one of his classes, and part of her training would involve
spending a month as a man, out in the local malls, finding out what
fooled friends and strangers alike, and what gave her away.
The results were stupendous. As Teena
Brandon, a girl from Lincoln, Nebraska who moves to Falls City and
starts life anew as a boy, runs with the lads, wins the heart of Cloe
Sevigny and comes to a horrible end, she was wholly outstanding. In
fact, she was so good that no one was surprised when she beat
heavyweight contenders Meryl Streep, Julianne
Moore and Annette Bening to win the Best Actress Oscar and Golden
Globe. A fair reward given that for her performance she'd only been paid
$75 a day - $3,000 in total.
Swank would now make serious efforts to
expand her range, even if it meant forsaking lead roles for interesting
parts. After appearing alongside Brittany Murphy in a comic short
directed by husband Chad (with whom she'd also co-narrate the audiobook
Big Mouth And Ugly Girl), she moved on to The Gift, where Cate Blanchett
would star as a psychic and therapist who becomes involved in the
disappearance of tarty socialite Katie
Holmes. Hilary would appear as Valerie Barksdale, the badly beaten
wife of redneck Keanu
Reeves, who comes to Blanchett for help and inadvertently brings
Reeves' impressive wrath down upon her.
Written by Billy
Bob Thornton, it was a superior thriller and very different from her
next outing, the period drama The Affair Of the Necklace. Here she
played Jeanne St Remy de Valois, an orphan who dreams of returning her
family to their former wealth and status. To do this, she pulls a con
where she hopes to fool not only Joely Richardson's Marie Antoinette and
Jonathan Pryce's cunning Cardinal, but also the devilish and insanely
sophisticated Christopher Walken, playing Cagliostro, head of the
Illuminati. Amidst court intrigue and sexy shenanigans, all goes well -
but then it all falls to pieces as she inadvertently acts as a catalyst
for the French Revolution.
Also featuring Adrien Brody and Brian Cox, The Affair Of The Necklace
saw Swank in esteemed company, as did her next effort, 2002's Insomnia.
A remake of a 1997 Norwegian movie of the same title, starring Stellan
Skarsgaard, this saw Al
Pacino as a jaded cop sent north with his keen young partner to
investigate a murder in Alaska, land of the midnight sun. Up here, the
guilt-ridden Pacino is in trouble as his partner may grass him to
Internal Affairs and prime suspect Robin
Williams has spotted his weakness and begins to play upon it. Hilary
would impress once again as a local deputy, fresh and enthusiastic, who
hero-worships Pacino but still pushes on with her job. Directed by
Memento's Christopher Nolan, it was a brilliant drama and also a big
hit.
Having starred in another short directed by her husband, this time the
thriller The Space Between, Swank progressed to infinitely lighter fare
with the sci-fi action flick The Core. Recalling the outlandish sci-fi
movies of the 1950s, this was based on the crazy premise that the molten
middle of the planet has stopped spinning so, within a year, everyone on
the surface will be fried by solar microwaves. In order to save us all,
a hole must be drilled and intrepid heroes must journey to the centre of
the Earth where they'll set things revolving once more with powerful
nuclear explosions. Hilary would be one of these heroes, the hugely
resourceful space-shuttle pilot Major Rebecca Childs and, amazingly, it
was actually tremendous fun.
Moving up a step in the industry, Swank
would now act as executive producer and co-star of 11:14, a quirky, $3
million dollar black comedy in the spirit of Run, Lola, Run. Flashing
back from a fatal car accident, this would see several different stories
converge, involving a drunk driver, a gang of bored, prank-playing kids,
a manipulative girl running two boyfriends, and Hilary as a frustrated
clerk plotting to rob the grocery store where she works. Following this,
for the first time in six years, she returned to TV for the prestigious
HBO movie Iron Jawed Angels.
This took her back to 1912 as she played
Alice Paul, a smoking, flirting, forthright and self-possessed agitator
for women's rights. Advised to be more discreet by party leader Anjelica
Huston, Swank and fellow radical Frances O'Connor form their own
National Women's Party and begin to put pressure on political
candidates, including President Woodrow Wilson during World War One. It
was a great role for Hilary as it took her on a voyage of
self-understanding and erotic discovery, as well as seeing her on a
painful hunger strike when she's jailed and about to be certified
insane.
The TV movie would see her nominated for another Golden Globe, but Swank
was not pushing for screen accolades. Instead she returned to her first
love, the stage, travelling to Charlotte, North Carolina, to play Helen
Keller's teacher Annie Sullivan in the award-winning The Miracle Worker.
This run was intended to be in preparation for an advance to Broadway,
but production problems and then Swank's film schedule forced a
postponement.
She moved on to Red Dust, set in South
Africa during the Truth And Reconciliation hearings where Apartheid-era
soldiers and policemen admitted their crimes and were absolved. Hilary
would play the lawyer of a black politician who confronts a cop who,
years before, tortured him and "disappeared" his friend. But
Swank's case hits problems when it's revealed the politician's memory
may not be reliable.
If Iron Jawed Angels and Red Dust tested her thespian range, her next
project would present a far more physical challenge. This was Clint
Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, where Swank would star as a hillbilly
waitress from south-west Missouri who seeks to escape her dead-end life
via success in the boxing ring. To achieve this, she attempts to enlist
veteran trainer Eastwood, but he refuses to work with a girl, until
persuaded by Swank's persistence and the wise words of former boxer and
lifelong sidekick Morgan
Freeman. The movie would brilliantly chart the relationships between
the three leads, and all three actors would find themselves
Oscar-nominated (Hilary would take the Golden Globe and beat former
rival Annette Bening for the Best Actress Oscar yet again).
It was a reasonable reward for a
difficult training process that had seen her learn the craft under
champion trainer Hector Roca at New York's famous Gleason's Gym, where
the likes of Ali, Frazier and Tyson had pounded the bags before her. It
was also where Robert
De Niro had worked to become Jake La Motta for Raging Bull (and
where La Motta himself had trained). Swank would put on over seven kilos
of muscle for the role, and exhibit a great deal of courage as she dared
to spar with real-life champion Lucia Rijker.
Having now proven her abilities beyond
doubt, Swank would continue to seek consistency in a wide variety of
roles. Her next part would see her as a genuine femme fatale in Brian De
Palma's take on James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, concerning the
real-life murder of Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress found mutilated
in 1947. Josh Hartnett would play a cop on the murder trail, whose
investigation is complicated when he falls for both Short lookalike
Scarlett Johansson and Hilary, the decadent and bisexual daughter of a
dodgy construction mogul. It was all about desire, suspicion and
betrayal - as if Jack the Ripper had come to Hollywood.
Playing a femme fatale was now appropriate for Swank. Having for a while
been considered somewhat masculine due to her fine performance in Boys
Don't Cry, she'd broken down those barriers by becoming an athletic but
very feminine model for Calvin Klein in 2004.
She also represented Estee Lauder. She's
very much a product of her age - a vegetarian from the age of 14, an
animal lover (she helped to rescue trapped pets after the 9/11 attacks)
and, as a keen skydiver and white water rafter, a woman who likes to
push at the boundaries. She's clearly capable of remaining at the top
for some considerable time yet.~ Dominic Wills
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