Hilary Swank Relates To New Role

Four years ago, Hilary Swank won an Academy Award for playing sexually conflicted Brandon Teena in the true story "Boys Don't Cry." Now, Oscar talk has started again over Swank's portrayal of a determined boxer in "Million Dollar Baby," directed by and co-starring Clint Eastwood.

She tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith it was love at first sight -- of the script: "The producers sent this to me and they didn't tell me anything about it and I read it and I instantly just laughed and cried and was inspired.

"This is a girl who grew up with nothing and had a dream and, ultimately, you know, I'm a girl who grew up in a trailer park and had a dream and so there was that instant connection. …She said (of boxing), 'This is the only thing I ever felt good doing. If I don't have this, I don't have anything.' I often felt the same way with my career. And so there was that connection and that is a pretty big one."

"Boxing," Swank continued, "is an element of the movie, but it's really a story about relationships, and it's a love story, the platonic love between a father-daughter relationship, which is the relationship that Clint Eastwood and my character have."

Swanke says she trained hard for the role, putting on 19 pounds "of muscle. Which is a lot different than sitting around eating a lot of doughnuts, which would have been a lot of fun."

She worked out in a Brooklyn gym with a renowned boxing trainer four to four-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week, for three months. "If I'm going to play a boxer," she says, "I'd better be believable as a boxer, and that's part of the job that I love. But it entailed drinking egg whites and flax oil and eating every hour and a half. I needed to sleep nine hours, because you have to let your body to rest in order for your muscles to grow, but I couldn't go that long without eating, so I had to wake up and eat protein shakes in the middle of the night."

Swank concedes it's tough following up an Oscar-winning role. Many observers even think winning the coveted statue can be a jinx: "I think the whole jinx thing comes because people think, 'How you find a great role after that great role?' I think that's what it really is.

"And I often asked myself that, as well, after doing 'Boys Don't Cry.' The really great roles are few and far between and I just feel so lucky to have found this one and that it was brought to me and that, you know, Clint and the producers believed in me and saw me in this role, because it's been the best experience of my career so far, so I feel very lucky."

Proof of her determination comes from a story she shared with Smith. Years ago, she was trying out for hour-long dramas and was told by one executive, "You're just too – half-hour." Meaning, suitable for sitcoms.

Four months later she landed her role in "Boys Don't Cry."