Hilary Swank hadn’t heard of Erin Gruwell when she agreed to play the one-time high school teacher, but after reading the script for “Freedom Writers,” she had to take the job.
“It was a no-brainer,” said Swank, looking smart in a black dress and Chanel pumps during a recent session with reporters in New York City. “I read so many scripts and I would say that one in 20 is stellar … You know, you read it and you just get chills.”
The film follows Gruwell’s work with 150 at-risk kids at a Long Beach, Calif., high school in the 1990s. She taught the students that writing their own troubled life histories was an empowering act–and thus turned them into high achievers. The film hits theaters on Friday. It also stars Patrick Dempsey, Mario, Scott Glenn, April Lee Hernandez, Jason Finn and Hunter Parrish.
Swank, who is also a co-executive producer of the film, was Gruwell’s first and only choice to play the part.
“Hilary is very passionate, and she’s a fighter,” Gruwell said. “She’s also like my students in that she’s street-smart, and she’s driven. And she takes that same fighter spirit into the role.”
Swank, 32, said she could relate to the kids and what they went through.
“I have such a deep connection to it on so many different levels,” she said. “Not that I’m trying to say my background or my history was that similar–I never got shot at and I never tried to shoot anybody.”
Swank once described herself as “a girl from a trailer park who had a dream.” But that portrayal of her life sounds more destitute than it was. Her dad was a mobile home salesman, and Hilary and her brother grew up in a three-bedroom double-wide surrounded by the lakes and mountains of Bellingham, Wash.
“Without comparing [my life to the teens’], I just felt like an outsider as a kid and I didn’t feel like I fit in at school at all,” Swank said. “I didn’t feel hopeless for my future because I had this idea of what I wanted to do in my life and I had my mom believing in me. But to me the power of having someone believe in you is partly what this story is about.”
There’s little doubt the two-time Oscar winner had to work hard to reach the top. After her parents separated when she was in her teens, Swank and her mother moved to Hollywood to pursue Swank’s acting dreams. She bounced along the fringes of the industry for years, appearing in what seems like an endless series of sitcoms (“Growing Pains,” “Evening Shade,” “Beverly Hills, 90210”) and second-tier feature films (“The Next Karate Kid”).
It didn’t help matters that she wasn’t a classic glamor girl, and was being given advice that wasn’t designed to bolster her confidence. “[They told me] my lips were too big, and I should never wear lipstick, and my name was horrible and I should change it,” she said.
Swank doesn’t look back on those years as a bad experience. For her, it was all about doing the best job she possibly could.
“I never treated anything like it wasn’t important,” she said. “I didn’t look at anything and go, ‘Oh, great, I have to go do this piece of crap movie of the week.’ I looked at it like I was so lucky, I was so excited every time I got a job.”
Then came “Boys Don’t Cry,” an indie film Swank made for $3,000. As Brandon Teena, a Nebraska girl who passed as a boy and was eventually murdered for it, Swank was practically unrecognizable, and totally mesmerizing. Her subsequent best actress Oscar placed her at the top.
Five years later, she won her second Academy Award for her portrayal of a waitress who becomes a world class boxer in “Million Dollar Baby.” But Swank says possible Oscar wins aren’t her motivation for choosing roles.
“The last thing I ever do is think is this going to be an award movie,” Swank said. “Because the second you put some kind of pressure on that, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons … I’m in this business because I love people and their stories.”
NOT ALL WINNERS
Hilary Swank looks like an actor who knows how to pick movie roles. But her Oscar-winning roles in “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby” were followed by real stinkers.
“Clint Eastwood always says that you aim for the bull’s eye but you’re not always going to hit it,” Swank said recently. “You just have to go with your gut and hope for the best.” [REDEYE].
– “The Affair of the Necklace” (2001): Not even a corset and wig could make her anything other than a modern woman.
– “The Core” (2003): Swank tried to be an action hero in this sci-fi turkey.
– “The Black Dahlia” (2006): Swank’s failed attempt as a femme fatale showed that playing sexy is not her thing.
