Here’s an interview with Hilary Swank, who trained four and a half hours a day, six days a week, for three months to get into boxing shape for “Million Dollar Baby” – the latest troubled-woman-boxer-will-kick-your-ass-movie.
What bugs me about these interviews of ass-kicking heroines is this need the interviewer feels to remind the audience that it’s so sad that these women aren’t looked at as more “feminine” (if you want to hear a woman snap back at an interviewer about this bullshit, check out some Michelle Rodriguez interviews). There’s lots of questions about what her husband thinks, and how her training affected her husband’s view of her (instead of asking, you know, how the training affected her view of herself, her confidence, etc), cause lord knows all us women are supposed to be living for that Idealized Feminine Form that men are always talking about (see previous post that bitches about just this).
Apparently, some dipnut (casting director Felicia Fasano) said of Hilary (who’s mostly played untraditional female roles) that she needed to “embrace her inner supermodel” and start taking on more traditional feminine accourtrements.
Hilary’s response:
“I follow my gut because in the end that’s all you have. I shied away from playing just ‘the girl’ roles because I didn’t find them inspiring,” she added. “I wanted to be taken seriously. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to push myself to the limit. I wanted to — I want to — do all that. That’s where my passion lies, and it’s not just playing the arm candy.”
I think my response would have been a little less diplomatic. I think it would have come out something like:
“Fuck you, you fucktard.”
