Hilary Swank won fame and acclaim for her Oscar-winning performance in 1999's Boys Don't
Cry, and did it all over again just five years later in Million Dollar Baby.
Then, Hollywood suddenly stopped talking about her.
Why did she go from in demand to out of the spotlight?
Here are a few theories.
She won two Oscars too quickly
They say that winning an Oscar can be a curse.
But winning two in the span of five years?
That's a whole other story.
Swank faced backlash in Hollywood after she won her second Best Actress Oscar in 2005,
for the Clint Eastwood boxing drama Million Dollar Baby . Suddenly, the actress had gone
from starring in 90210 to joining the ranks of fabled two-time winners like Bette Davis
and Vivien Leigh.
And she beat out deserving actresses like the long-suffering Annette Bening, who still
has never won an Oscar.
"Shut up!
Stop it, you weak...you baby.
Shut up.
Shut up!"
Beyond the politics of who deserved what, Swank was inevitably set up for failure by
the Academy.
By age 30, she had far exceeded expectations.
At that point, there was no place to go but down.
She got lucky
The strange thing about Swank's two Oscar wins is that they were both lightning-in-a-bottle
moments in her career.
She certainly gave excellent performances in both Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar
Baby.
Nobody's going to look back and say to themselves, "Wait, she won an Oscar for THAT?"
We're looking at you, Marisa Tomei.
"I'm watching you go down in flames.
And you're bringing me with you, and I can't do anything about it."
The problem is, outside of those two movies, Swank has never done anything that warranted
that level of acclaim.
Before Boys Don't Cry, she was only really known for movies like The Next Karate Kid
and getting fired from 90210.
And afterward she continued to star in mediocre projects like Iron Jawed Angels and The Affair
of the Necklace.
So was she great?
Or did she just happen to appear in great movies?
Lousy post-Oscar Projects
Swank had a difficult time finding success after Million Dollar Baby was released in
2004.
She alternated wildly between starring in prestige movies that were too mediocre for
Oscar consideration and mainstream flicks that seemed more geared towards making money
than satisfying critics.
One of her roughest patches came in 2009, when she starred in the Amelia Earhart biopic
Amelia, which was in every sense of the word a disaster.
Reviews were terrible—it earned a 20 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes—and box office
returns were even worse.
The film grossed just $14.2 million against a reported $40 million budget, and Swank's
days of Oscar glory started to feel like a thing of the past.
Not that it bothers her.
She told The Independent that, "You're an artist and you're putting yourself out there,
and you take that leap, and sometimes you fly and sometimes you fall."
She has other interests
Part of the reason reason Swank hasn’t been making as many great films is because she’s
devoting her time to helping needy kids and animals with her non-profit charity.
"It's called the Hilary Foundation.
And it brings animals, who have been abandoned, and children, who've been given up on, together
to help heal each other—through rescue, rehabilitation, and responsibility training."
It’s all part of her new focus on living every moment of life to the fullest.
"You know you just never know what's going to happen tomorrow, and you have to be really
in the moment and be present."
She's been caring for her dad
Swank's absence from the spotlight has also had to do with family concerns beyond her
own control.
In 2015, the actress revealed to the Huffington Post that she had recently put her career
on the back burner in order to take care of her ailing father, who had just had a lung
transplant.
"It's a certain amount of time, and in a lifespan it's a blink of an eye, and I wouldn't change
it for the world.
I mean there have been job opportunities that I passed on, things that I said I can't.
But really what we're here for is our family, right?
Luckily, her father is on the mend, giving Swank a chance to get back in the movie business
and hopefully regain her role as one of Hollywood's top actresses.
Does she have a future on TV?
Soon, Swank will test her luck on television again with the new Starz drama The One Percent.
The premiere date is still up in the air, but it already boasts a slew of high-profile
names, including Ed Helms, Ed Harris, and Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Inarritu,
who created and co-wrote the project.
So don't worry too much about Swank.
Her Oscar days may or may not be behind her, but her Emmy days could be just starting...
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