Hilary Swank on Why Hollywood Still Favors Men and Her 60-Eggs-a-Day Diet for 'Million Dollar Baby, Hollywood still favors men over women to an astonishing degree, Hilary Swank told a gathering of students Nov. 12.
"My male counterpart will get paid ten times more than me — ten times,” she said, speaking at the Loyola Marymount University School of Film & TV. "Not double, but 10 times for the same job. We only have this much left for the female actress. I mean, there’s two genders on this earth. Both are compelling, interesting, diverse, wonderful in all their own separate ways. And yet there’s an influx of male roles and there's just not for women."
The two-time Academy Award-winning actress (Boys Don't Cry, Million Dollar Baby) also spoke about her new Western drama, The Homesman, in which she costars with Tommy Lee Jones, who also directs. (The movie opened Nov. 14 in limited release.) She plays Mary Bee Cuddy, a pioneer charged with transporting three mentally ill women from Nebraska to Iowa.
“This is a feminist movie,” she said. “It's about the objectification and trivialization of women and it takes place in the mid 1800s. But us women know exactly what that feels like right now in 2014 — talking about gay, lesbian, transgender issues and how far they've come ... yet how far we still need to go. How great that Tommy Lee Jones, this person that people see as this like rough man, is at the helm of telling this feminist story.”
While lamenting the lack of solid roles for women, she also explained her resistance to television — despite the fact that she is one of the most sought-after actresses for series TV each new season.
"As a performer, I don't like to play the same thing over and over," she said. “I like to play it and let it go and move on. That's also why television hasn't really been something that I've done, either. The idea of playing a character for even two years, to me feels claustrophobic — only because I want to play a lot of different people."
But Swank says she may soon be seen onstage. “I actually am, funnily enough. This one is new. It's incredible. It's really a gem.” She declined to name the play.
Swank also spoke about two of her key roles, in 1999's Boys Don't Cry and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby.
Read more Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Alba Join 'The Mechanic' Sequel
“I felt like I got shot out of a cannon during that movie,” she said of her groundbreaking role as a transgender teen in Boy’s Don’t Cry, for which she got paid only $75 a day. She later became a spokeswoman for the gay, lesbian, transgender and questioning youth in New York City, an experience that changed her perspective on the progress being made in the LGBT community.
“It opened up the topic for a big discussion,” she said. “And in talking to these kids, 100 percent of them were either abused physically or heckled emotionally every day of their lives [for] their sexuality. There’s still a long road to walk. These stories are happening all the time, still to this day.”
As for Million Dollar Baby, she cited the training for that film as the hardest thing she has ever done. “I started working out five hours a day — I had to eat 210 grams of protein a day,” she said. “I don't know if you guys are aware of intake of protein... I had to eat 60 egg whites in a day and I couldn't. So every morning I would drink them. I had to eat every hour and a half. So in the night, I had to wake up and drink protein shakes. I put on 23 pounds of muscle."
Swank was the final guest in the second season of the interview series The Hollywood Masters, moderated by The Hollywood Reporter's executive features editor, Stephen Galloway in partnership with Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television. Other guests this season have included Charles Roven, Billy Bob Thornton,Michael Mann, Hans Zimmer and James L. Brooks.
A full transcript follows:
GALLOWAY: Hi, everyone. I’m Stephen Galloway and welcome to The Hollywood Masters Films on the campus of Loyola Marymount University. Our guest today is one of my favorite actresses, whose had an astonishing career, whose life has been as fascinating as her career, whose made films from Boys Don’t Cry to Million Dollar Baby to P.S. I Love You to Freedom Writers. And who has a very, very good new film, The Homesman, which she’ll talk. I’m really delighted to welcome the two-time Academy Award winning actress, Hilary Swank.
