Hilary Swank in Away: A woman boldly going...
Hilary Swank chuckles as she recalls her mother’s excitement on the night of her first Oscar win. As she met the media in the minutes after getting her Academy Award for Boys Don’t Cry, Judy Swank came running towards her daughter, shoes in hand. She was moving at such a pace that security were alarmed, she laughs.
“You go backstage at the Academy Awards, after you've won, and you're doing all your press interviews. My mom comes bursting through the doors. And these security are like: ‘Ma’am. Ma’am!’She said: ‘That's my daughter!’ She had her shoes in her hands. Apparently she took her shoes off, in case I won, she needed to run down and be able to congratulate me.”
Mother and daughter had to sit in separate areas of the auditorium that evening, hence the emotional reunion on the night she saw her daughter make Oscar history.
“I only had one ticket and I took my husband at the time,” she recalls of that night 20 years ago. “I really wanted her to come because she was such a big part of my becoming an actor. But I could only get a ticket for her way up, like nosebleed seats. And I remember when I won, I was on stage and I said: ‘To my mom who's up there somewhere’. Everyone thought she had passed away and I was talking about heaven.”
Judy Swank has had plenty of cause to be proud since. Her daughter would win another Best Actress Oscar five years later - for Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby - putting her in a rare double Oscar winners club. She has mixed it up in the years since, blending romances and straight drama, and will shortly debut on Netflix’s ambitious new astronaut series, Away.
She gives the type of commanding, intelligent performance we’ve come to expect from her as Emma Green, the head of an international space team headed on a high-stakes mission to Mars. But the mission will mean spending three years away from her husband and daughter, and the series looks at the impacts that will have on all of them.
“This is really a show, I think, that deals with the family that's being built in space but also the families that have gotten left behind on Earth, and the gravitational pull to family. That deep desire for love and connectedness but then also what you're going into which is the great unknown. It's kind of the best of both worlds.”
She had already learned to fly for her role as pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart in Amelia, famously continuing her lessons after the shoot was finished so she could complete the training and get a pilot’s licence. Such a skill must have helped when aiming to convince audiences as an astronaut.
“I think any experience that is built on gives you the ability as a step to growing and building that character for sure. Being a pilot in this show, learning how to have that flight experience before as Amelia was definitely helpful.
"But I think the most challenging part of this show was learning what it was like to be in zero-gravity while never getting that opportunity and then how challenging it is to depict being in zero-gravity. We went to an astronaut camp, but that was really about learning how to move in zero G. What's interesting is that it's like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. Because the second you start moving slowly, you want to slow your voice, and that clearly doesn't happen in zero G.
“I also had this incredible opportunity to speak with astronauts, both retired and actually currently going into space, and they were so generous with their time and their willingness to answer any question that we had. They would help us learn about those emotional challenges and what that would feel like, to the best of their ability.”
Much of Away’s early drama comes from the fact that the team of astronauts come from different backgrounds and cultures, and initially her authority is challenged. It’s a melting pot hurting towards a largely unchartered territory, and for Swank that was part of the draw - it’s crucial to their survival that she unites her team.
“It's Emma's responsibility to make sure that all of her crew members are safe and make it out alive. And I think her biggest fear in space is that something happens under her watch, and it risks someone's life. In turn, I think her biggest fear is that something happens back on Earth without her there to be able to handle the situation and she loses someone there. Both of those things aren't necessarily in her control and that's one of the interesting things to play.
“She’s an empowering woman who also leads with vulnerability, that she's not afraid of that and that it's not seen as a weakness to her. I love that she doesn't have all the answers but she is willing to figure them out. I like that she relies on other people and their strengths to be a good leader.”
Swank has always appeared to be the kind of star who marches to her own beat. It has become more commonplace for actors to do so recently, but 12 years ago, she co-founded and set up a production company, 2S Films, with producer Molly Smith. She has executive produced many projects in the years since, including Away. She hoped getting involved in the business side of filmmaking would support her career, she says - but also the careers of others trying to establish themselves.
“I think it became important to me because I was able to help shape the stories and bring my experience from the 29 years that I've been in the business, bringing those strengths into getting a story told. Whether it be through the collaborative story building process, where the characters are all going, or whether it's someone needing help with getting artists on to be a part of it, the writing capacity, the acting capacity, the music space, just having access to those different worlds, from being in it for so long.
“It also has helped shape the choices that I make - having a production company gives me the ability to create stories that I feel need to be told. And that is super important to me. As a female, I want to make sure that a lot of these stories are being told from my point of view, rather than a white male point of view, which is what we've seen for so long, but also being inclusive of different genders and different races.”
