‘Million Dollar Baby’ Was the One Moment Where Hilary Swank Nailed the Movie Star Thing

Only fourteen women have ever won the Academy Award for Best Actress at twice, and Hilary Swank is one of them. But not exactly one of them, either. The list includes legendary names like Vivien Leigh, Jane Fonda, Bette Davis, and Elizabeth Taylor. It includes living legends like Olivia De Havilland, Ingrid Bergman, and Glenda Jackson. Meryl Streep’s won three times; Katharine Hepburn four. As of this past year, it includes Frances McDormand.

Swank won hers five years apart, for 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby, and even though it hasn’t been 15 years since her most recent win, they feel very long ago. Because for whatever reason, Hilary Swank doesn’t feel like she’s among that echelon of actresses. Jodie Foster wins two Oscars and reaches that most inner circle; she makes any movies she wants, she directs, she presents at the Oscars as a living legend. Swank never got there. The actress whose standing most resembles hers is probably Sally Field, who wasn’t regarded as much of an actress before she won for Norma Rae in 1979, and for many that first win was seen as a career anomaly. That’s why she was so overwhelmed when she won a second time for 1984’s Places in the Heart. That was the famous “you like me!” speech, which communicated the fact that Field needed that second win to really feel accepted as a great Hollywood actress.

Swank could have given that very same “you like me!” speech when she won for a second time at the 2004 Oscars. The years between Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby weren’t exactly flush with praise for the actress. She only made five movies in those intervening five years, with lead roles in a mere two of them: The Affair of the Necklace and The Core. In many ways, Million Dollar Baby was a comeback only five years after a breakthrough. But while she could have made a Sally Field moment for herself at those second Oscars, the fact that she didn’t says a lot about how Sally Field is a movie star and Hilary Swank, when it comes right down to it, isn’t.

That’s not to say that Hilary Swank isn’t any number of things: famous, talented, versatile, likeable. But she’s never been a proper movie star. Her blistering, shocking performance as Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry was the kind of breakthrough performance that actors and actresses dream of. In many ways, Swank’s relative anonymity (outside of Beverly Hills, 90210 and The Next Karate Kid loyalists) helped her win that first Oscar. The Academy does so very much like to anoint a new star. But even from that first Oscar stage, you could see that’s not exactly what happened. Say what you will about drama-queen actresses, but they know how to create a moment for themselves. The only memorable part of Swank’s Oscar speech was that she forgot to thank her husband.

The bulk of Hilary Swank’s career has been a push-pull of an actress who often lacks the charisma for leading roles and yet can never seem to disappear enough into character parts. Witness one of her most recent films, Logan Lucky, where Swank’s character shows up late in the game as an enigmatic law-enforcement officer who is dying to get the drop on the Logan siblings. When that character walks into that bar at the end of the movie, her mere presence is meant to be a lightning bolt square between the audience members’ eyes. But Hilary Swank’s mere presence isn’t a lightning bolt into anywhere, and her acting talents, while good, aren’t great enough to let her Kate McKinnon her way into an off-beat character.

Which is why Million Dollar Baby stands out in Swank’s career so starkly. It’s the one movie where you completely feel like you’re in the presence of an actress with chops and a performer with star quality. It’s the consummate Hollywood prestige story, where an actress who needs the right role gets it, transforms physically, gives her all to a respected Hollywood filmmaker like Clint Eastwood, and then plays against type to portray a woman navigating the man’s world of boxing.

Million Dollar Baby‘s run to the Best Picture Oscar in 2004 had a lot to do with the industry’s love and admiration for Clint Eastwood. But he wouldn’t have been able to make that movie with just any actress. For the rare moment in her career, Hilary Swank was in the exact right place at the right time to capitalize on her particular brand of charisma. Every bit of awkwardness and discomfort and hesitation that could often hamper a Swank performance was funneled into her portrayal of Maggie Fitzgerald.

Million Dollar Baby is now available to stream on Netflix. As a movie, it’s good, and often great. But as a moment in time for an actress who, while well rewarded, hasn’t had very many big moments, it’s essential.

Where to stream Million Dollar Baby