From homeless to Hollywood: How Hilary Swank went from living in a car to winning two Oscars

Hilary Swank is one person who can truly say that they are self-made. Like a surprising number of celebrities, she had a brush with homelessness when she “began the process of breaking into the business.”

Her mother upon losing her job and being recently divorced decided that it was a “now or never” moment to help her daughter attain her dream of becoming an actress. So, with $75 and a Mobil gas card, they moved to Los Angeles in an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme which would serve as their home for a brief time.

Hilary Swank’s journey from homelessness to Oscar winner

Swank moved around as a child, born in Lincoln, Nebraska, then on to Spokane, Washington before settling in Bellingham in the northwest corner of that state, as her father was an Air National Guardsman. Despite living in a trailer park, she never saw anything negative in it.

That was until her friends’ parents began excluding her from dinners and playdates she shared with The Wall Street Journal. “I realized living in a trailer park made me an outcast,” she said.

“Though I knew I was perceived as different, I didn’t immediately understand the classism. Then I did,” Swank added. “I also understood that where we lived was a bigger issue for people than who I was.”

She got bit with the acting bug at the age of nine when a “wonderful teacher” named Mr. Sellereit had his students write and perform a skit. About putting on her show in front of the class she said, “something came alive inside of me. I’d never experienced that sensation before.”

While she has shared that other teachers told her that her dream of acting was more or less a pipe dream, her mother saw that she had talent and needed to be in Hollywood. So, Swank dropped out of high school at the end of her sophomore year and the two moved to Los Angeles.

During the early days in the City of Angels, the two spent their nights sleeping in their car parked on quiet residential streets in Pasadena. Eventually, the parents of a new friend she had made let them sleep during the night in their house that they were selling, but they had to be out during the day.

Once her mother landed a secretary job, they were able to rent a bedroom from a single mother in Burbank.

Without the money to pay for acting lessons, Swank shared that she treated her auditions as free classes to develop her chosen career. In the beginning she appeared on several TV shows, before landing a spot as Carly Reynolds on ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ and a two-year contract.

However, she was only in one season before she was fired after the 13th episode, not because of her acting abilities, but because of the scripts she was given according to her fellow cast members Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth. While she was “devasted” at the time, it came with a “silver lining.”

Now free to audition, two months later she got the lead role in the 1999 film ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, for which she won her first Oscar for Best Actress. She went on to win a second Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Clint Eastwood’s 2004 film ‘Million Dollar Baby’.

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