Having earned her laurels – in the form of an Academy Award – for the 1999 movie Boys Don’t Cry, in which she played a boy trapped in a girl’s body, American actress Hilary Swank takes on a very different role in her most recently released effort, the period drama The Affair Of The Necklace.
“The films are polar opposites,” said the 27-year-old actress in a recent TV interview. “In one I had to strap my breasts down and in the other push them up.” In Affair Hilary plays an ultra-feminine 18th century aristocrat desperately trying to regain her family’s name and fortune by swindling Marie Antionette out of a priceless jewel.
Although the film’s producer-director, Charles Shyer, says he picked Hilary for the part specifically for her ability to make that “180 degree shift”, the former Beverly Hills, 90210 actress admits that her previous role in Boys came at a price. “I felt like I’d lost a piece of me. I think I had been hiding my femininity for so long that I felt I wasn’t going to get it back.”
She also reveals that her Oscar success caused her to suffer from self doubt when filming began on Affair. “We started shooting two months after I won the Oscar and I felt a lot of extra pressure.”
The verdict on the Shyer film has been mixed. Some critics give Hilary the thumbs up for having pulled off a follow-up to her Oscar winning role, while others see her performance as something of a letdown.
Her most recent role, in a police drama starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams, perhaps stands out by its very ordinariness. “I play as close to a normal girl as you can get,” says Hilary. “The character I play is clearly a girl. I have no accent and no costumes to play in. I felt very naked.”
The Affair Of The Necklace opens in the UK on January 4.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
