She's a Big Girl Now

By Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

Hilary Swank is cranked up. The high-cheekboned, high-energy beauty is nearly popping from the chair outside her local Starbucks. It's not the Tazo Awake tea that's got her this way; it's her schedule. "The ninth is the New York Film Critics Awards," she begins, beaming a toothy grin. "The 10th I do Jay Leno, the 11th I fly to Paris to find a dress, the 18th is the National Board of Review, the 19th is the Los Angeles Film Critics and the 23rd is the Golden Globes."

Fly to Paris to find a dress? Four awards ceremonies in two weeks? Life for a young actress doesn't get much better than this. Following last fall's release of the indie sleeper Boys Don't Cry--in which she portrays Teena Brandon, a sexually confused Nebraska woman who was raped and murdered for posing as a man--Swank won Best Actress honors from critics in Los Angeles, New York City, Boston and Toronto. Her Golden Globe competitors are Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore--and she's a near cinch for an Oscar nomination. Not bad for a 25-year-old whose flashiest roles before now were as Ralph Macchio's replacement in The Next Karate Kid and half a season on Beverly Hills 90210.

But success in Hollywood can be fickle, so Swank has hired a team to help her climb through the window of opportunity that Boys has opened. A publicist (cost: around $2,500 a month) was brought in to build Oscar buzz. A new stylist (paid per event) is helping her glam up. "It's so weird. I get calls from designers: 'We'll send a look book. Just tell us what you want,'" says Swank, whose current taste for Valentino should avert barbs from E! channel fashionista Joan Rivers. And the agent who negotiated the deal for Boys Don't Cry is gone, along with her manager of nine years. Instead she's signed with Kevin Huvane, the powerful Creative Artists Agency executive whose other clients include Tom Cruise. "Every agent in town called me," she explains. "I met with everybody, but [CAA] seemed to have the best game plan." Pricewise, her stock has risen quicker than Qualcomm's. She jokes that she was paid "about $75" for the low-budget Boys and figures her next paycheck will jump "a thousand percent."

She's already begun taking meetings. So far she's talked to practically every studio, as well as Robert De Niro and director Michael Bay. Last week she met Ridley Scott, who's scouting a female lead for Hannibal now that Jodie Foster has declined to reprise her Silence of the Lambs role. "I haven't sat with [Martin] Scorsese yet," says Swank, who's angling for a part in his Gangs of New York opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, though she hears Cameron Diaz has an inside track. "That will be my truly impressive meeting."

It's been a 10-year wait for this overnight success. After moving as a teenager from Bellingham, Wash., to Los Angeles with her mom, Swank was a guest on the sitcoms Growing Pains and Evening Shade before playing the best friend in the original, 1992 movie version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In 1998, after a bad run of TV movies and short-lived series, she auditioned for the role that turned her career around. Director Kimberly Peirce tested "every butch lesbian and transsexual out there" for Brandon before watching a tape from Swank. "She was beautifully androgynous--boy jaw, boy eyes, boy ears," recalls Peirce. "More important, she showed you she loved being Brandon. She was believable."

The challenge now is getting Hollywood to believe she's more than a one-hit wonder. Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas), Pauline Collins (Shirley Valentine) and Mary McDonnell (Passion Fish) all got Best Actress Oscar nominations in the '90s, and who remembers them? Swank, who is married to actor Chad Lowe, is making moves to avoid the same fate, but she realizes the business is a gamble. "A lot of people in my position might be scared this moment will pass," she says. "But if you just have fun and enjoy it, you'll be doing the right thing. You hope you make good choices and things fall into place. If they don't, well, that's fate." Right now she's more concerned about fatigue. "I'm glad I'm young, because this crazy schedule is never ending," Swank sighs. "I don't see how people do it. It's a different type of exhaustion than I've ever known." And with that, Swank gives thanks for the Tazo tea, gets into her BMW and drives off into the unknown.