Hilary Swank's New Love Story

You don't mess with hot, Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank. She's got those Million Dollar Baby abs and she could probably deck you! Hilary shows a softer side in her new romantic dramady P.S. I Love You in which she plays a young widow trying to start a new life with the help of her best pals and her husband's letters. We wanted to talk about working with Gerard Butler, her philosophy of love and loss and more.

Hilary takes on a variety of roles; everything from her Oscar-winning performance as a girl who wants to be a guy in Boys Don't Cry to a myth-busting ex-minister in the creepy The Reaping. Next year you can catch her as the legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart in Amelia. We've always found Hilary to be very funny, approachable and candid. She brought her teen niece Amanda to our interview to observe the process and introduced her.

Amanda looked cute and casual but Hilary was a dressy knock-out with her new chin-length bob and wearing a Lanvin dark blue satin, military influenced shirt dress with a tight pencil skirt. Her jewelry included some great gold bangles and small diamond hoop earrings. And, wow, some very high, black Jimmy Choo heels with cute zippers on the sides. Since Hilary's character in the movie enjoys designing shoes, we started with the footwear question....

TeenHollywood: Wow, you look awesome and those are great shoes!

Hilary: Thank you [she lifts her foot and unzips the zipper on the shoe] I put my parking money in there [like a sucker, we look] Just kidding.

TeenHollywood: Are you a big shoe person?

Hilary: Am I a shoe person? Oh my gosh. You should see. I am such a shoe person. I love shoes. What is it about women? I don't know about guys, but I love shoes. I have a thing. I like to have so many shoes that I started taking pictures and putting them in a plastic box and putting a plastic picture on it. But I limited myself so I bought only the amount that can go in my closet and anytime I get a new one in, I have to get rid of one. They're really pretty but, are you really gonna? There's only so many days in the year so I have 365. No. I don't know but I have a lot.

TeenHollywood: Do you have any input into your wardrobe in a film?

Hilary: You always have some input just because you've done all this work on the character and you try and incorporate things about your character into your wardrobe. We all pick out our clothes and have a personal reason why we love what we're wearing. So that's a really, really important part of the developing of the character. And it takes weeks to do that. It's something that people don't think about when they watch a movie. It's all these little things that make up a movie and that's certainly a really important part for me. Richard [her director] loves the golden age of cinema. He loves those old movies with Audrey Hepburn and Bette Davis and he was really inspired by that.

TeenHollywood: You seem organized. Did you always have a plan for your life?

Hilary: I'm kind of a Leo through and through. I'm very spontaneous but I've always known, from the age of nine, that I wanted to be an actor. So that was one path that I continued down and obviously am still doing. But other than that, I didn't say 'oh, I want to be married at this date', or 'I have to do this in my life or that in my life'. It was really just the acting part of it.

TeenHollywood: Okay, you have a very hot co-star in this film. Could you talk about working with Gerard Butler?

Hilary: Yes, isn't he great? Well he's a great and wonderful guy and we really hit it off. You know, I consider him a friend. He got into the business so late that he's just fresh, he doesn't have any preconceived ideas about how it should work, so he's really playful. He's kind of a kid in that way. He has a lot of wonder. And it's essentially what acting is. It's just playing so it was back to basics, just trying to figure out the scene and breaking the scenes down and the moments between the lines and the playfulness within that. I work similarly in that way so we just hit it off. But I also want to add that if you didn't love Gerry, if you didn't love him in this movie, you wouldn't go on the journey with my character. So to fall in love with him that deeply in the first ten minutes of the movie just really says a lot about him.

TeenHollywood: You shot here and in Ireland. Which was first?

Hilary: We shot in Ireland first, for three weeks and we worked excruciating hours, 18 hours a day there to finish what we had to do, because it's a pretty low-budget movie, and six-day weeks. And Richard [LaGravenese, writer/director] really writes scenes for actors. That first scene in New York was 12 pages. That's 10 per cent of the movie. So, when we got back, on my days off, my Sundays I just devoted to completely memorizing lines, because also the pace of this movie being romantic and having comedy within it, I really needed to know the lines inside and out so, my off time was completely devoted to these long scenes and learning them. That was our first step in New York.

TeenHollywood: We talked to Gerry about that long opening argument scene. How long did it actually take to shoot?

Hilary: It was 10 or 12 pages. What we did was we went in and rehearsed it for three days. Gerry and Richard and I went in to my character's apartment and we outlined everywhere we wanted to go and at what time, so we could be really quick with it and not waste time on the set rehearsing. We really went in on our weekends and everything and our off times to make sure we got that scene right, because it's such an integral part of the movie. And then the actual filming I think did take three or four days. We did the whole thing in one big master shot with the wide camera, and then did it four pages at a time, breaking it up while we moved the camera around.

TeenHollywood: It was pretty impressive. When a loved-one dies, do you think it good or bad to keep getting letters from them?

Hilary: I think it's more a blessing than a curse but certainly it can be a curse because it becomes a crutch. And eventually the letters are also going to 'die'. They can't keep coming so at some point you know, the realization of that hits her, and getting over that is a big grieving process as well. But what a beautiful gift to give somebody. When he's going through this huge thing in his life of losing his life, he's thinking of his wife and of how he can help her move on. It just shows how illuminating love can be when it's so unconditional like that.

TeenHollywood: When you are depressed over a loss are you a "hider" in your home with the curtains drawn or do you just get out there and get over it?

Hilary: Oh. Well, you know, I think you have to learn to deal with stuff that happens in your life because it's going to come back and get you at some point. You can't run from it. At some point, you're just going to have to deal with it. I try to deal with it as soon as it happens. I'm very much a 'let's put it on the table and sort it out' person. If you're in a fight with someone that you love, whether it be a parent, a child, a significant other, whoever, best friends, working it out before you leave, not holding that grudge [is important] because you never know what's going to happen tomorrow and this movie is a beautiful reminder of that. The people that you love dearly, do not take them for granted.

TeenHollywood: In this internet age, does a love letter sent by e-mail have the same charm or potency as a hand-written one?

Hilary: You know, I think that writing letters is definitely a lost art, and there's something special now when somebody actually sits down and writes a hand-written letter. But it's nice to get a love letter any way. I think they're beautiful. I think love letters are great, even if they're short little notes in a coat pocket or something.

TeenHollywood: Your character is very young when she meets Gerry's character. Do you remember your first kiss?

Hilary: I think my first kiss, I was seven and it was really yucky. I think it was one of those things where someone else instigated it for us.

TeenHollywood: Harry Connick is one of your suitors in this film and he has some great, very blunt lines. Did you have trouble keeping a straight face when he said some of that stuff?

Hilary: You're so right. There are outtakes where we are literally losing it. I always feel like performances that really stand out are those that when you watch the movie, you can't see anyone else playing the role. And I don't think anyone else could have played that role like Harry did. When you read the script it was challenging because it's so dry. I thought how could anyone do that and not be an a**hole? How are you going to fall in love with this character? And he made that character so lovable and so great, and he was hilarious. There are literally outtakes of me laughing so hard I'm crying.

TeenHollywood: You are obviously in great shape but do you get nervous when you get a script saying you are going to be semi-naked or in your underwear in a scene?

Hilary: When I'm reading a script, I don't stop at something like that. I don't think, 'uh oh'. I just kind of go with the flow, but of course the day before, you're like 'tomorrow I'm in my panties and my bra? Oh, that's a weird day at the office'.

TeenHollywood: You are going to play the famous Amelia Earhart? Can you talk about that?

Hilary: Yeah. It's fascinating. I start doing my research in January. Definitely my next project. . . what a wonderful woman, what an inspiration. A pioneer too. When I'm doing my preparations in breaking down Amelia, who she was and doing all that research, hopefully I pray the writers get what they need and we can start working on that. It's some very minor work [needed] on the script.

TeenHollywood: Does the story offer a solution to the mystery of what really happened to her?

Hilary: No. It's not really about that. There are so many things that are about where she is, and a lot of people have a lot of different ideas, but it's not really exploring that in the movie. I just met a Japanese woman and she said she saw a musical about Amelia Earhart two days before I left Japan. I said 'wow'!

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.