“The question that bothers me the most? Yeah, the one that says…Hilary, when are you going to play a pretty girl?” This is what the actress Hilary Swank has responded on occasion, who, with some of her gestures, has sometimes moved away from the image of what she can be considered a Hollywood diva. The night she picked up her second Oscar for example (in 2005 for her stupendous role in Million Dollar Baby) she went out in her chic low-cut Guy Laroche dress for a hamburger. Hilary then said that she was just "a girl who had a dream, simple" and in this way she has lived her life, discreet and natural. Her career, however, is anything but normal, because thanks to her talent she has become one of the most recognized faces on the big screen. At 48 years old and with a more than praised filmography, she now fulfills her most personal wish: to be a mother of no less than two babies with her husband Philip Schneider. Do you remember the details of her path to her success?
She fulfilled her dream of being an actress
She was born in Nebraska and since she was just a little girl she already loved acting. The first time she took to the stage was when she was nine years old, when she became Mowgli, one of the protagonists of The Jungle Book, in her school's theater. At that time, she was studying in Bellingham and combined her academic training with competition: she represented her school in an interstate Youth Olympics, held in Washington, as an experienced swimmer and gymnast. However, her destiny was not in the stadiums, Suzy Sachs, a producer with a keen eye for stars, discovered her, removed her from the athletic tracks and began working with her to create her own route to stardom. . At sixteen, she already took acting as a professional job in which she invested all her energy, so her opportunity would not be long in coming: she was in 1992 in the children's comedy Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Shortly after, she was able to show off not only as an actress, but as a very capable athlete, in The New Karate Kid.
Titles such as Lethal Pact and Heartwood followed, as well as series such as Sense of Living, where she played Carly Reynolds between 1997 and 1998. In 1999, she received the role of Teena Brandon in the film Boys Don't Cry, the true story of a young woman determined to be recognized as a man. She cut her long hair and gave an interpretation of such quality that it led her to collect her first statuette in 2000. Paradoxically, a stage of few projects followed, just a handful of adventure titles such as The Audition, Premonition, The Mystery of the Necklace, Insomnia and The Core.
Clint Eastwood then appeared in her life and offered her a place in Million Dollar Baby, where she played Maggie Fitzgerald, a waitress whose aspiration was to become a boxing champion. Again a challenge because to reflect the results obtained by her character, Hilary herself had to undergo her own physical transformation process. This film was the springboard for her second Oscar in 2005 and for unanimous acclaim from film critics. The Black Dahlia, an adaptation of James Ellroy's noir novel, directed by veteran director Brian de Palma; and Diarios de la calle are other titles that she has included in a career that has not stopped adding projects: she currently has three pending releases, Mother's Milk, Ordinary Angels and Alaska Daily. Regarding his concerns outside the big screen, he has founded the NGO The Hilaroo Foundation for animal welfare, which brings together homeless youth with abandoned animals, and has acted as the image of various brands such as the perfume Insolence by Guerlain, among others.
