Cinema Experts

"My most annoying question is 'Hilary, are you ever going to play a pretty girl?'"

Hilary was discovered as a child by producer Suzy Sachs, who coached her in acting. When she was nine years old, she starred in her first play as "Mowgli" in "The Jungle Book". She began to appear regularly in local theater and school plays. She went to school in Bellingham, where she lived with her family, until she was 16. She competed in the Junior Olympics and Washington State championships in swimming; she ranked 5th in the state in all-around gymnastics (which would come in handy for starring in The Next Karate Kid (1994) years later). In 1990, Hilary and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where she enrolled in South Pasadena High School, and started acting professionally. She appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) but The Next Karate Kid (1994), where she got the part competing against hundreds of other actresses, was her breakout role.

In September 1997, Swank was cast as single mother Carly Reynolds on Beverly Hills, 90210. She was initially promised it would be a two-year role, but saw her character written out after 16 episodes in January 1998. Swank later said that she was devastated at being cut from the show, thinking, "If I'm not good enough for 90210, I'm not good enough for anything." As it turned out, the firing was the best thing to happen to Swank, as it freed her to audition for the role of Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry. Swank dropped her body fat down to seven percent in preparation for the role. Many critics hailed hers as the best female performance of 1999; her co-star of the film, Chloë Sevigny, had her performance singled out for praise also, Swank and Sevigny were often ranked as the best two leads of 1999 in film. The performance ultimately won her the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Actress. She subsequently won the Best Actress Oscar again for playing a boxer in 2004's Million Dollar Baby, a role for which she underwent training and gained 19 pounds of muscleSwank's Oscar success meant that she had joined the ranks of Vivien Leigh, Helen Hayes, Sally Field, and Luise Rainer as the only actresses to have been nominated twice and win both times (both times she won over fellow actress and nominee Annette Bening). She is also the third-youngest double Best Actress Oscar winner (after Luise Rainer and Jodie Foster).