The role Hilary Swank “felt very naked” playing
There’s more than enough evidence to suggest the Oscars curse is a very real thing looking at how many victors have struggled or ended up slumming it so soon after reaching the pinnacle of their profession, but Hilary Swank was determined not to let a star-making performance define her career, or allow it to stagnate.
Of course, winning an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ for a movie that was released when she was only 25 years old did wonders for her standing in the industry, even though Swank has admitted she wouldn’t consider headlining Boys Don’t Cry today given the way society has evolved in the quarter of a century since.
It was only her seventh feature and just her third time taking top billing, too. Generating that much momentum so early on is tough to maintain. To try and broaden her horizons, Swank went through the performative gears by starring in Sam Raimi’s supernatural thriller The Gift and period piece The Affair of the Necklace, before her next film presented a unique challenge.
Fresh from enacting the tragic life of Brandon Teena, cowering in fear as the victimised wife of Keanu Reeves’ abusive husband, and embodying disgraced 18th-century countess Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, Swank’s next role required her to play the most ordinary person she had in years.
Sharing plenty of screentime with the legendary Al Pacino in Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia, Swank’s Ellie Burr is the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed member of local law enforcement caught up in the investigation that draws The Godfather veteran’s grizzled detective Will Dormer to the perpetual daylight of Alaska in the first place.
It was a change of pace for someone who’d grown accustomed to disappearing into their characters, and the way Swank described it was ironic considering she spent the majority of her time a warm jacket due to the chilly temperatures of remote fishing village Nightmute.
“I play as close to a normal girl as you can get,” she said of Insomnia, per Hello. “The character I play is clearly a girl. I have no accent and no costumes to play in. I felt very naked.” The best actors don’t require elaborate ensembles, dialect coaches, and complex figures to deliver their best work, which meant Swank was perfectly fine sparring with Pacino and an against-type Robin Williams in the top-tier remake.
Only in the world of acting could normalcy be viewed as something unexpected and outlandish, but Swank was evidently trepidatious at being tasked to embody a character who was exactly as presented. Burr was relatively inexperienced, completely unaccustomed to murder cases, and eager to be taken under the wing of a celebrated superior officer from the big city, with no additional bells or whistles to be found, which was basically nudity for her.
