Hilary Swank recalls the days when she was an aspiring actress who had 'nothing.'
Years before her Hollywood stardom, Hilary Swank was no million dollar baby.
In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, the Boys Don't Cry star recalls her earliest days in Los Angeles trying to become a teenage actress while living with her newly separated mom, Judy, in their car.
"In L.A., my mother and I first lived in her Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme on quiet residential streets," she describes. "When we weren’t sleeping in the car, we stayed at the house of a new friend my age whose family had just moved out and were trying to sell their home. We slept on an air mattress."
By that point, Swank was familiar with feeling like an outsider because of her former Washington trailer park home. While Swank notes it "wasn't a negative for me" as she had "food and a roof" over her head, she eventually realized the social rejection she faced because of her circumstances.
"It wasn’t until my friends’ parents excluded me from dinners and playdates that I realized living in a trailer park made me an outcast," she says. "Though I knew I was perceived as different, I didn’t immediately understand the classism. Then I did. I also understood that where we lived was a bigger issue for people than who I was."
Swank did find community in local theater, through which she fostered her talent, eventually signed with an agent, met with casting directors and ultimately got her break with early roles on Harry and the Hendersons, Evening Shade, Growing Pains, and in the 1992 movie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of one play she co-starred in with her mom, Swank says, "Nothing mattered except what I brought to the table and stage. I belonged."
More than three decades have passed since she was a Los Angeles newcomer looking for a big break. A two-time Oscar winner and new mom of twins who lives on 168 acres in Colorado, things look a bit different these days for the longtime star, but that does not mean she's forgotten her humble beginnings.
As the Ordinary Angels actress tells WSJ, "Even though I’m happy we left L.A., every so often, when I’m there for meetings, I’ll drive along a street in Pasadena where my mom and I parked and slept. Despite the challenges, I feel nostalgia for those days, when we had nothing."
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