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An Enlightening Journey
RD: You made a trip to India last year.Swank: I wanted to do some volunteer work and got connected with an organization that sent me to Palampur. They placed me in a school and at an orphanage. My job was to teach four- to six-year-olds the English alphabet. I thought, That's going to be easy. The second you say that, you're in for it. I went to the front of the class and wrote the alphabet down and said, "A." They looked at me like I was an alien. But by the time I left, they could say the alphabet, and most of them could write it too. It was great to build that trust and know that my enthusiasm encouraged them.
RD: There's a lesson in that, right?
Swank: If you go into life with a good attitude, you'll get more out of it.
RD: What was India like overall?
Swank: The poverty is rampant, but they are some of the happiest people I've ever met. I saw plenty of barefoot kids with nothing who were happy. It's a reminder of what's important in life -- family, health, being able to have a place to go where you can learn and stretch your mind.
RD: You taught school in India and play a teacher in Freedom Writers, yet you yourself didn't finish high school.
Swank: It's not something I'm proud of. I'm not a quitter in any way. I don't like to start something and not finish.
RD: So why did you leave high school?
Swank: There were a lot of reasons. I was moving to Los Angeles and had made the choice to be an actor. And I found high school to be really difficult, but I don't think you should quit when things are hard. But that's how it happened. Later, I did get my GED.
RD: Would you ever go back to school?
Swank: I take classes all the time. I go to community college and take classes privately. I'm a sponge. It's one of the things I love about my job. I get to learn so many different things.
RD: You've been asked more than once "When will you play a pretty girl?" How do you respond?
Swank: I think beauty is all relative. It's subjective. To say that Maggie Fitzgerald wasn't pretty -- to some people, she might've been. People say the hair, makeup and pretty clothes make a pretty girl. I just don't see it that way.
RD: You've already won two Oscars. Do you ever worry, "Now what?"
Swank: No, I never think that. I have so much more to do. I want to go deeper. That might mean I try something and fall flat on my face, but I don't ever want to play it safe.
RD: For Boys Don't Cry, you took on the persona of a transgender person for a couple of months. In Million Dollar Baby, you took some real hits. Would you go that far for a role again?
Swank: If I believe in a role, and in the story, I'll do what I need to make it believable and to make it work.
RD: Even risk your well-being?
Swank: Actually I have some problems with elevated mercury in my system. I wasn't eating meat when I was filming Million Dollar Baby but had to put on 19 pounds of muscle. So I ate a lot of fish. And for Boys Don't Cry, I went down to seven percent body fat. In Black Dahlia, when my character dies, I hit my arm on an old-fashioned ironing board, and I have a scar from that. But how great to have that. That's what life is -- you want to get in there and play hard. The battle scars are a reminder that you're alive and human, and that you bleed.
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