In her new film “Freedom Writers,” two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank ended up relating a little too well to her character: Hollywood’s million-dollar baby plays an exceptionally accomplished career woman whose professional dedication alienates her less successful husband.
“I filmed it during and after my own split,” Swank admits during our interview last month at a Manhattan hotel, referring to her very public separation last year from actor Chad Lowe.
“I play what a lot of women talk about in real life,” the 32-year-old beauty said about her screen alter ego Erin Gruwell, an actual heroine of a public school teacher who has used her idealistic resolve and inventive educational methods to transform the futures of ghetto youth in southern California.
“She’s pursuing her dreams. The woman is successful but not spending as much time or taking care of things at home. But the other person in your life is supposed to be sharing your life. He loves you more than anyone and is supposed to understand you instead of trying to keep you down. The world already says, ‘You can’t do that.’ There is a support that’s missing, an enthusiasm that’s missing. It just kills a little piece of you. It’s a sad thing. I think people who are scared don’t allow the other person in their life to be fully realized.”
Famously, Swank has realized herself against all odds. After growing up “trailer park” poor in Washington state, as she has confessed, she and her mother even lived together in their car when she moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to try to make it in show business. Early stints on “Beverly Hills 90210” and as “The Next Karate Kid” (1994) would never have augured the kind of high-prestige thespian she would become. She garnered her first best actress Academy Award as the transgendered Brandon Teena in 1999’s heartrending “Boys Don’t Cry” and attained the odds-defying repeat five years later with Clint Eastwood’s boxing tragedy “Million Dollar Baby.”
Since filing for divorce in May after her nine-year marriage to Lowe, Swank has since admitted that she is dating her agent, John Campisi.
“I think the real challenge in life is finding a way to live for yourself but also making time for a relationship. It’s hard. It’s hard to find balance in life. But you shouldn’t have to give up your whole self to make someone else’s life complete.”
