Hilary Swank Talks About New-to-DVD "Amelia"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 05 February 2010 15:14

Written by Brad Balfour

Not so long ago, women weren't allowed to serve in the military or on the police force. Hell, they're still not allowed to drive in some countries or even go out unaccompanied. With those thoughts in mind, director Mira Nair's telling of Amelia Earhart's relatively short life and long accomplishments resonated even more profoundly when the film played in theaters.

The biopic, starring Hilary Swank as the intrepid aviatrix — as the rare female women pilot was then called — now takes flight again on DVD and Blu-ray. Within the confines of home theaters, it may find the audience it missed on its first takeoff.

The pioneering Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic; she accomplished many other trailblazing feats, promoting aviation and air travel and becoming an early champion of women's rights. She became an international celebrity and a hugely successful pitchwoman, and had a version of an open marriage. And this all happened during the 1930s, shortly before she flew into history in her famed, ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the Earth via the Equator.

Not unlike Amelia's subject, both two-time Oscar-winning star Swank and filmmaker Nair have been pioneers in their own right: Swank for winning an Oscar playing a character who was a drag king (a woman dressing and living as a man) and Nair for being an award-winning South Asian woman director competing for and getting directorial jobs that previously hadn't gone to a person of either association.

Between the big smile, mouth full of teeth and unique vocal cadence, Swank fashioned an uncanny and unforgettable facsimile of Earhart. A cadre of journalists and women aviators (members of the Ninety Nines, a female pilots' group founded 80 years ago by Earhart) got to speak and hear both Swank and Nair talk about putting together this story and performance.

Whether or not you find Earhart's story inspirational (after all, we sort of know the ending), her relationship with the two men she loved — her publisher and backer, George Putnam (Richard Gere) and Federal aviation leader Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor) — makes for a compelling emotional tale if nothing else.

Q: When you're making a film where the ending is known, you have to create a dramatic tension. How did you develop that tension and maintain the rhythm of it?

HS: When you think you know how it ended you have to see if it really ends the way you think it ended — because there are a lot of theories, aren't there? Obviously, making a movie is collaboration and it takes a lot of people's ideas, but in the end I just try to do what I was told and what was on the page and try to bring the honesty to it.

It's a big responsibility to play someone who really lived and who is as iconic as Amelia. We all have such a great idea of who she was and what she looked like, so there wasn't a lot of room for fictional license. We had to just do the best we could to do honor to that person. Under Mira's guidance and keen eye — she's an incredible visionary — we tried to navigate the best we could, and hopefully, that is on screen.

Q: What surprised you about her that affected your performance?

HS: I learned about Amelia from a very young age, and what I learned was what you learn in textbooks. So obviously, getting under the skin of a person that I'm playing is really important.

We're all specific human beings. We know what our favorite color is, what we love; we know what we don't like. Trying to figure that out and understand a person you're portraying is very important. Ironically, Amelia was a very private person, so what she was expressing out in the world might not have been her true thoughts.

One of the things that I took away from Amelia that was very inspiring and moving was Amelia's way of going about her life — the way she carried and expressed herself. She made no apologies for saying, "This is my life and this is how I see it, and this is how I want it to be done."

In 2009, that's still really rare, especially for women. It's a more male-centric world, and I think that a lot of males are able to have the life they envision for themselves. So when we're talking about somebody who lived in the 1920s — when women just got the right to vote — and in the '30s, it's incredible. It's obviously a period piece, yet it even transcends what we know now. It was certainly a reminder for me to live life, and that you have to constantly look within and continue to live the life that you want to live for yourself and not for other people.

I [wish] we could all be so upfront and forthright about our feelings, our emotions, our desires, and needs, and somehow manage our expectations of relationships. I look at my life and say, "I might be doing this because it was my mother's idea of my life or my friend's, or partner's idea, or whatever it is." Amelia's [life] was such a great reminder that you can live your life the way you want it, find love and experience your dreams. You can have it all. That's what I really learned.

Q: What were the similarities between you and Amelia?

HS: One of them is that she loved to travel, and I love to travel. I've been so fortunate in my career to travel all around the world, and part of that is to talk about the films that I am a part of. Sometimes it can be very grueling and difficult. In the last 16 days, I was in Italy and then back to Los Angeles, then Dubai, then London. then back to Los Angeles, and now in New York. [Flight attendants] actually laugh because I know them so well, and they say, "Hilary, it's illegal for us to fly as much as you fly."

I'm constantly in the air and I'm constantly out promoting my films. Amelia understood that without understanding the business side of things, you can't have your career. If I'm not willing to go out and talk about the things that I'm a part of — which I in fact love, so it's not like it's difficult to [do] — then you can't have the other side of it. That makes complete sense to me.

I understand the business side of it, although I really love the art side of it, and they intertwine. You try to do the best you can, and I wonder what Amelia would say. I remember her saying that it was hard, and there's a line in the movie: "I feel like I'm this white horse jumping through hoops." Sometimes you feel like you're in a circus. When things become more personal, and you feel like "I'm just an actor trying to talk about my love for movies," you have to remember why you're doing it and be in touch with that.

Q: As a woman, how did you relate to her open marriage?

HS: It's really challenging to be that honest, even with the people that you really love and feel are suppose to love you unconditionally. It's really hard. But I think that Amelia's way of living her life was very honest and open. So when she lived her life the way she wanted, she had already expressed that's how she was going to do it. It wasn't like she was hurting anybody along the way. I respect anyone who is able to be so forthright about themselves. I think that that's a lot of what our life is about, figuring out how can we be as honest and live as honestly with ourselves and in our relationships.

Q: How beneficial was it for you to see that archival footage about Amelia?

HS: A lot of it is from newsreels, so it's more her public face. But there are little moments within the newsreel where she doesn't know the camera is on and you actually see her tone down her way of speaking and her physicality.

She had a unique speaking pattern, which was the most challenging accent that I have done to date. I spent over eight weeks trying to learn how she spoke. There is that period way of speaking, [like] you hear [with] Katherine Hepburn, and you see all those old movies with that way of speaking, which can sound posh or upper class. Amelia wasn't that.

She was a girl from Kansas, and sounded period yet different. Trying to figure that cadence out, and also not make it the elevated public persona that she put on except when needed, was quite a challenge. Thankfully, I had Mira saying, "Push it a little here, bring it back here, that's a little too much here." It was challenging to walk that line to find the human quality in it, and also to relate to it now because we don't speak like that.

Q: Did you walk away from this role satisfied with your knowledge of Amelia?

HS: In order to play a role, you have to dive into so many different aspects and ways. I felt [that] by the end of it, I had a pretty good idea of who Amelia was — or at least [who] we feel Amelia was from the books we were reading and the information we had — and tried to go deeper in telling the stories through the scenes that were written on the page.

These roles [I have played are] all in my heart, and my life's richer walking around with Amelia right in my heart. It's wonderful. Throughout some things that I'm experiencing, I often think about what the characters I've played would do in these situations. You can't help but have that in you. So it makes for a really rich life.

For more by Brad Balfour: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-balfour

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