By Tim Nasson
Los Angeles – The last time we took notice of Hilary Swank was nearly five years ago, when she portrayed a girl pretending to be a boy in her Academy Award winning role in Boys Don’t Cry. Some actresses, well, actually most, after winning their first Oscar, continually end up in dreck, like Catwoman’s Halle Berry; or A Head In the Clouds‘ Charlize Theron. I could go on… or Jennifer Connolly who? Juliette Binoche who? Marlee Matlin who?
There are exceptions, though. Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, to name a few, just keep getting better and have won or are on their way to winning multiple acting Oscars.
There seems to be no in between.
Thankfully, Hilary Swank has proven with Million Dollar Baby that she falls in the category of the best actresses, rather than just winner of a Best Actress Academy Award on the road to The Surreal Life.
What differentiates the two classes? I think it’s their agents and/or own decision on choosing what is their follow up to their Oscar winning role.
“I was heartbroken,” says Swank, when recalling some of the letters she received after Boys Don’t Cry was released. “Here were these poor gay men and lesbians, some who lived their lives as the other gender, who were getting beat up, and if not beat up, treated like anything less than human. I would like to think that we have changed a lot since the late 90s. But if the movie Boys Don’t Cry helped one person realize, who otherwise wouldn’t know, that transsexuals and gay people are people, then I didn’t make that movie in vain.”
Some actresses, while bona fide geniuses when it comes to crying or dying on screen, seem to be in it just for the money or the glamour, especially after they win their first Academy Award.
Hilary Swank, (and very few other actresses), seem to be in the minority.
If they can’t be in an Academy Award caliber movie, playing a potentially Academy Award winning character, then why be in the business? (O.K. Hilary Swank was in one commercial and critical flop, The Core, two years ago, and when I interviewed her back then for that film she had decided that either she work in another Oscar caliber movie or get out of the business.)
I say, aye, aye.
We all need to pay our bills. But, if at all possible don’t we all, no matter what our profession, want to do the best that we can with what we have? In some cases, let’s say, if you’re a high school principal, you don’t have much choice. Each year, the students get nastier and more violent. But you do your best. How ‘bout, we say, you’re a bus driver? Same ole’ route, every day. But, you can make the most of your job – getting to know your regular passengers, greeting them with a smile each morning, noon and night. Or you think of your route as a paycheck. Nothing more. Neither you, nor your passengers will benefit from that mindset.
Acting is not a far cry from being a bus driver or high school principal in principle, at least.
I am serious. If you’re a principal, chances are, you have the ability to sway the tide, the student and faculty atmosphere at your school, by your example. If you’re a bus driver, you have the ability, I think, to make the route a boring one or a fun one by the way you interact or fail to interact civilly with your passengers.
The same can be said about actors and actresses. The reason why some are so lauded and successful is not because of who they are or what they make or how beautiful they are. No. It’s because of what they make of each role they choose to play. (Take a look, if you’d like to, though. In The Core, Hilary was on her toes even if the script couldn’t do her any justice. The same can be said for her performance in An Affair of the Necklace).
I had the opportunity to sit with Hilary Swank recently, and had reservations, not of the restaurant kind when I went to meet her, rather of the doubting kind. How could she, the girl who was in The Karate Kid IV, not only be an Academy Award winning actress but on her way to clinching and winning her second Best Actress Award in less than five years?
After seeing the movie, Million Dollar Baby, which Academy Award wining director Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven) created, there is no question. Not only will Hilary be nominated for Best Actress – and win – if there is any justice in Hollywood, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and the movie itself will all be nominated for Oscars. It is a masterpiece. But it wouldn’t be a masterpiece if even one of the actors in it failed to ignite a spark, if the charisma wasn’t there. (Imagine what the fabulous television show “Everybody Loves Raymond” would be like without its entire cast, missing Doris Roberts as Marie, with, perhaps Florence Henderson in the role.)
Clint Eastwood, who brought us last year’s Mystic River, has eclipsed that movie, and Hilary Swank has outshined Sean Penn, in the role that won him his first Academy Award, which he was deserving of, I might add. (Eastwood who in addition to acting in M$B, directs, is worthy of a Best Director and Best Actor nod for Million Dollar Baby. He did not act in Mystic River – but was nominated, rightfully so, for Best Director.)
Based on a collection of short stories, Rope Burns, by F.X. O’Toole, Million Dollar Baby tells the story of a poor, literally, white trash girl, (from a trailer park in the south), who is determined to prove to herself and everyone around her that she is a force to be reckoned with. That just because she’s a girl doesn’t mean that she can’t join the boys, at least in spirit, in the boxing ring.
Sound like Boys Don’t Cry Part 2? Well, from watching the first three quarters of M$B, you’d think, no. It has some of the same elements. The white trash girl, from a trailer park. But the girl fights her way to a million dollar paycheck, thanks to the father figure she never had, Clint Eastwood, who plays her trainer.
“But then something happens, towards the last quarter of the movie,” sighs Swank, sipping from a bottle of Evian. “And her world, her trainer’s world and the boxing world’s world are turned on their heads, upside down, as you know.”
Yes, since I saw the movie, I know. And just as I was watching The Sixth Sense, knowing there was a ‘surprise’ ending, I went into this, knowing there was a ‘surprise’ ending. I thought I had it all figured out, until about three minutes before the surprise is revealed, or rather, delivered.
Without giving away the surprise to you, Swank steps on egg shells. “It was very hard, playing this role,” she says. “It took a lot out of me. I trained for weeks, in the boxing ring before we shot the film. I had never boxed before. But I learned a lot. In fact, Clint is such a great director that the filming took twenty-seven days, rather than the scheduled twenty-nine. That is unheard of. I spent more time training in the boxing ring than I spent shooting the film.”
She is adamant that I don’t give away the ending of the movie in my feature. “You won’t give it away. Will you?” she asks, almost in a demanding tone. “I hate going to movies and seeing the previews,” she reveals. “I just like to go to a movie and be surprised from beginning to end. I like to not know anything about it.”
Well, you know this much about Million Dollar Baby. It’s a movie about a girl who won’t give up. A girl who is determined to become the world’s best female boxer.
“Did you get hurt training or during the filming,” I ask her, noticing a small scratch near one of her eyes – that seemed to be a recent one.
“Funny you should ask that,” she laughs. “No. Not once.” She points to her eye. “But the other day, I was playing on the floor with my dog. I was holding one of his toys and he grabbed it in his mouth and pulled, and I pulled and he pulled harder. And then all of a sudden he bangs into my face. I get away with not a scratch making the movie and training before and then sit on the floor with my dog, in his boxing ring, and get hurt.”
Editor’s Note: Hilary Swank won her second Best Actress Award at the 77th Annual Academy Awards (Feb 27, 2005), for her role in Million Dollar Baby. She also won Best Actress Motion Picture Drama at The Golden Globe Awards(January 16, 2005), for her performance in Million Dollar Baby, (and the film’s co-star and director, Clint Eastwood, won Best Director, at both The Globes and Academy Awards. It was his second Oscar for director.)
Hilary Swank Interview with Tim Nasson for Million Dollar Baby.
