Why I Hate Hilary Swank as an Actress (A Quasi Review of Conviction)

By Sean Knight

This is the start of what I hope to be a series of articles about at least semi-respected actors and why we think they suck. They are to be taken with a grain of salt and are for amusement purposes only.  While we may think they really suck you don't have to.  But it's fun to pick on film actors.  Especially ones that have Oscars on their mantle.  The first victim is Hilary Swank after the jump.

What do I have against Hilary Swank you may ask? After all she is a two time Academy Award winner for her work in Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby.  The latter was even a Best Picture winner.  Did anyone happen to notice that both times she was playing white trash?  Yes in Boys Don't Cry she was playing a transgendered teen who was brutally murdered, but the story does take place in a small hick Nebraska town and Swank's character Brandon Teena just happens to surround himself (or herself) with drunken young hillbillies who get off on killing homos.  Now I realize that is an oversimplification, but let's be honest that's what the movie is all about - Swank being poor transgendered white trash.  She won the Oscar over the far more deserving Annette Bening whose performance as a "suffering" real estate selling middle class wife with a "loser" husband and an ungrateful child in American Beauty was filled with great humor and sadness.  But back to Swank.  Alright, the gay angle definitely worked in her favor as it was incredibly "brave" of her to play that character.  But the real reason she won that damn Oscar was because of her own personal story.  You see the reason Swank is possibly so well cast as white trash is because she actually used to be white trash.  Case in point the infamous Golden Globe acceptance speech where she solidified her place as the front-runner for that facile little gold man.  She described growing up in a trailer park and having little to no money and how her dream was to become an actress.  She then described Meryl Streep as her "acting God" and the rest is history.  

Now if this had been the only atrocity committed I could have forgiven Hilary Swank. It's not her fault that she won an Oscar at such a young age and truth be told it's not a bad performance, but there is something about Swank that I have never been able to get over.  It's that damn face.  The woman's face is built like a horse.  It's very Julia Roberts but even skinnier and sickly looking.  She looks like an inbred experiment.  Now I love ugly people on film.  Ugly faces often times translate to wonderful film faces.  But this is simply not the case with Swank.  And the fact that she is pale as a ghost doesn't help matters much.  She is hard to look at and her earnestness just puts it over the top.  I can never believe a single thing this woman is saying on screen because it's always so "poor me, poor poor me, my life is so hard".  And she is always welling up in tears.  Look at her Oscar clip for Boys Don't Cry.  Look at every clip ever of her used at an awards function and there she is blubbering like a baby.  Since when did crying become great acting?  But it's that damn face that makes you want to feel sorry for her.

But the biggest atrocity Hilary Swank committed was when she won the Oscar for Million Dollar Baby - a good movie (if flawed) with a great performance by Clint Eastwood.  The film, again, is a weeper and is yet again all about poor white trash.  But this time it's about overcoming obstacles and making something of yourself.  Oh, and she does get to play a mannish figure again.  Oh, and she gets to die at the end again, but instead of being brutally murdered she is euthanized by her boxing trainer.  OF COURSE SHE WON THE OSCAR.  A monkey could have won in that role and sure enough her acting antics in the film certainly are ape like.  She was up against Annette Bening, once again, for Being Julia and Bening had to suffer in silence in the audience. I'm surprised she didn't scream bullshit and run up to the podium to claim the gold man for her own.

Two Oscars down and a third to go. Well possibly. You see Swank isn't satisfied with being one of the very few women to have ever won two Oscars.  No, she wants the third so bad that you can see the desperation on her face every time she appears on screen now.  I was so happy when Amelia crashed and burned last year.  But you see Hilary didn't have that ace in the hole.   This year she does.  She's back doing what she does best - white trash.  Which brings me to Conviction.  In the film Swank plays Betty Anne Waters who puts herself through law school to become a lawyer in order to prove that her brother was falsely convicted of murder. Here she is playing northern white trash, so it's slightly different for her.  It's a crusade picture and for what it is it's well done.  But we have earnest and eager Swank mugging and blubbering about as much as possible in the picture to gain our sympathy. At one point, since she's missing the boxing gloves in this film, she gets to throw a few chairs and dishes to let us know she can play anger.  Oh and she gets to use the word "fuck" a couple times to let us know she means business.  Her grandstanding becomes intolerable by the half way mark and I began to wish her brother in the film was a murderer so he could put her out of her misery. Miss Swank may I suggest that next time you try something you almost never use - sincerity. The biggest problem with Conviction is that you have Sam Rockwell giving a touching and subtle performance.  The acting is all behind is eyes and for a good chunk of the film he has very little dialogue and has to do a lot of listening.  That means he has to listen to Swank talk for minutes at a time. And it goes to show how great of an actor he is that he comes off as well as he does in these scenes. What might have helped the movie and her own performance is if she had to actually listen to Rockwell instead of bulldozing over every line.  But you know whose getting nominated for the film?  That's right, miss Hilary Swank.  She surprised everyone with the SAG nomination and actors make up the largest voting body in the Academy.  It is very likely that she will get an Oscar nomination which would bring her toe to toe once again with Annette Bening for her performance in The Kids are All Right.  But Annette need not worry, because while Swank may be playing everyone's favorite white trash again, she doesn't have that second piece of the puzzle that has led to victory before.  She doesn't die in Conviction.  And we all know that in order for a white trash character to win an Oscar she's gotta die before those credits role to fully earn the Academy's sympathy and their vote.