Unconventional looks and an unpromising background did not prevent Hilary Swank's singular charisma imposing itself on the screen at an early age. Now starring in the film of Cecelia Ahern's PS I Love You, Swank talks to Donald Clarke
Hilary Swank shuffles uncomfortably into a Dublin hotel. At some point on the promotional tour for PS I Love You,the movie adaptation of Cecelia Ahern's indecently popular novel, one of the actor's vertebrae did something indecent to its nearest neighbour. As a result, poor old Hilary finds herself moving with the stiff gait favoured by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein. Eventually reaching her chair, she allows her assistant to lower her gently into place. What happened? Has she been fighting grizzly bears?
"Nothing so thrilling," she croaks. "It just happened. Planes don't help much, of course."
It must be hard to remain excited about being in the movie business on days like these. "Oh, I still find it exciting," she says. "No. If I ever start thinking 'what a pain', then I remind myself that I am being paid to talk about something I have wanted to do since I was nine years old."
Despite the stiffness of her posture and her occasional pained winces, Hilary Swank still radiates a singular charisma. Not quite as physically imposing as you might expect - she seemed eight feet tall when playing the doomed boxer in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby- she nonetheless has an impressive ability to occupy a hotel room. No sane person would mistake her for the woman who restocks the mini-bar and plumps the pillows.
Yet she does not look like an average movie star either. If it had its evil way, the industry would hire only conventionally attractive young creatures named Jessica. With her huge mouth and slightly gangly frame, Swank might easily have found herself shuffled off towards plucky-best-friend roles. But while picking up one Oscar might be regarded as a lucky accident, securing a second statuette guarantees you star status. A winner for both Boys Don't Cryand Million Dollar Baby, Swank had her celebrity imposed on the movie business. Like it or not, the studios have to find her mainstream projects.
Which brings us to PS I Love You. The picture tells the story of a New Yorker who, following the death of her Irish husband, is surprised to receive a series of letters from the unfortunate bloke.
Written before his demise (well, duh), they point her towards a self-help programme that involves karaoke, dancing on tables and, ultimately, a trip to a country that looks a little like Ireland. The geography is a tad askew. The locals' accents are bewilderingly peculiar. But, yes, it just might be the grand auld sod (as people are wont to say in this flick).
"I had never been before," she says. "But I always wanted to come. Sadly, I spent the time working 18-hour days. So I only got to see the country on the drive from Dublin to Wicklow. But it was very beautiful. The rolling hills, the greenery - it was very impressive."
It sounds as if she didn't have as much time for larks as the characters in the picture. Barely a second goes past without somebody reaching for a certain popular Irish whiskey.
"Yeah," she says. "There was a lot of that stuff about. People were always asking me if I was a Guinness person or a Jameson's whiskey person. I'm a Guinness person as it happens. But, as I say, I had no time to socialise much when I was here, I'm afraid."
Despite the studio deciding to move the bulk of the action from Ireland to New York and to cast Gerard Butler, a Scot, as the male lead, Cecelia Ahern (the Taoiseach's daughter, of course) has been broadly supportive of the project. Indeed, she came down to Whelan's pub on Wexford Street in Dublin to move among the cast and crew.
"Yes I met her a few times," Swank says. "It was great to talk to her and hear how she came up with the story. Her dad came into Whelan's as well, which was a treat. He was so generous and obviously very proud of his daughter. He was also clearly very proud the film was being shot here. So that was exciting."
I bet George Bush doesn't come to visit when she's shooting at home. "No. I'm afraid not. Maybe if his daughter got around to writing a book, things might be different."
HILARY SWANK DIDnot grow up hobnobbing with presidents and prime ministers. After winning that Oscar for Million Dollar Baby, she stumbled before the audience and said: "I'm just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream. I never thought this would ever happen."
Sure enough, she did come from the most humble of backgrounds. Born in Nebraska, she spent some of her early years in a trailer park in Washington State. Her parents split up when she was 13 and her mother promptly decided to drive the budding young actor to Hollywood. Swank had shown promise in high-school plays, but this remains an impressive gesture of faith on her mom's part. For the first few weeks they were forced to sleep in their car. Then, slowly, gradually, Swank began to pick up work.
"I think my mother was at a crossroads and she just felt, 'let's go for this, let's go and try'. I don't think we ever really considered what we would do if it didn't happen."
There must have been some idle periods during which she feared she might have to enrol in law school or learn to drive a bus. The entertainment industry is a cruel master.
"Well, I started working regularly pretty much immediately after I turned 16," she says. "I really was lucky. There was never a year when I didn't work. I never really thought about what else I might do for a living.
"The work I was doing was not always in great stuff, but I always valued the experience to learn about my trade."
After appearing in such shows as Harry and the Hendersonsand Growing Pains, Swank eventually secured the lead role in 1994's The Next Karate Kid, the fourth film in the juvenile martial arts franchise.
Three years later she was hired to play a single mother in the long-running drama series, Beverly Hills 90210. Were these her big breaks?
"Getting Karate Kidreally was a big deal," she says. "But 90210was in its eighth season and nobody really watched it any more. So that wasn't really such a big thing. And I was 23 at that time and had already done a lot of television. I felt like an old hand."
She was sacked from Beverly Hills 90210after only 16 episodes, but she maintains that this was the happiest accident of her career. Freed from the pressures of serial television, she was able to devote full attention to her role as a transgendered youth in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry. Swank lost several stone to play the role and spent some time walking about dressed as a boy before shooting.
Later, when training for Million Dollar Baby, she punished her body so hard she almost suffered blood poisoning from an infected blister.
"I don't know how else you would do it," she says. "You have to put on muscle to play a boxer. It is just as difficult to believably become a boy. You have to do your best to make it as believable as possible. Luckily, the role in PS I Love Youis probably the closest person to me that I've played."
Made for small change, Boys Don't Crypicked up fine reviews, but it was still a significant achievement for Swank to beat the likes of Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore to the best actress Oscar.
"The budget wasn't even $2 million," she says. "Everybody involved did it for the pure love of it. I made €3,000 for it. I was very happy that it showed society had changed and was prepared to acknowledge transgendered people. But, for me, it was like being shot out of a cannon. It was a surprising honour that suddenly opened up possibilities for me."
SADLY, THE AWARDalso brought Swank to the attention of the supermarket tabloids. When accepting her Oscar, she made the awful mistake of forgetting to thank her then husband, actor Chad Lowe.
The subsequent gradual collapse of the marriage was reported in excruciating detail and that early omission was dragged up again and again. It was implied that the success of her career - so much more conspicuous than her husband's - had imbalanced the relationship somehow.
"Oh, look that's old news now," she says, freezing over slightly. "The fact is that Chad and I have been divorced two years now. I don't remember reading that or hearing that. That must have been in an Irish paper or something."
It may just be the stiff back, but Hilary Swank comes across as a very cool customer. She appears only marginally more animated when discussing her divorce than she is when pondering the surprising warmth of the weather. Every now and then she must, surely, want to slap a reporter in the mouth. After all, following Million Dollar Baby, she has the training.
"I have a mother that helps me keep things in perspective," she almost laughs. "Anyway, I always say to myself that if I get tired of the travelling or the press or whatever, I can always just stop doing it."
• PS I Love You goes on general release today and is reviewed in The Ticket
