interview - HILARY SWANK
Life After Death
P.S. I Love You stars Hilary Swank as a despondent widow whose grieving process takes a sharp turn when she starts to receive encouraging letters from her dead hubby
By Earl Dittman
Get out the Kleenex, Hilary Swank is going to make you cry.
After a string of serious and even scary movies (The Black Dahlia, Freedom Writers, The Reaping), the two-time Oscar winner (Boys Don’t Cry, Million Dollar Baby) felt she needed a change. It came
in the form of P.S. I Love You, a teary romantic-comedy based on the bestselling novel by Cecelia Ahern.
Swank plays Holly, who’s married to hunky Irish singer Gerry (Gerard Butler). But her world comes crashing down when Gerry is diagnosed with, and then dies of, a brain tumor. To Holly’s surprise, however, within a month of Gerry’s death she receives the first of a series of messages from him, each one instructing her to complete a task which will help her get on with her life. Gerry has even arranged a trip for Holly and her friends (Gina Gershon, Lisa Kudrow) to Ireland to help her recover.
As it turns out, Swank was the one who needed to recover after shooting one particularly sexy scene with Butler.
Why this film?
“There were several reasons. Actually, [writer-director] Richard LaGravenese had given me a copy of the screenplay while we were filming Freedom Writers, and asked me to read it and let him know what I thought about it. I loved it…. I had been feeling like making a love story, but not one of your conventional, paint-by-the-number kind.”
|
Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler in
P.S. I Love You. Above: Lisa Kudrow,
Swank and Gina Gershon
|
After your separation from Chad Lowe, are you still optimistic about love?
“Oh yeah, I am to the point where I’m so optimistic that most people would tag me as naïve.”
Was Butler still in his buff, post-300 shape?
“Luckily,
he was [laughs]. Although his character in the film isn’t necessarily
supposed to be muscular, he was still working out during the middle of
the shoot, because he was doing a cover for one of those health
magazines for men. So he had to look his best for his close-ups. I
don’t know how much he is pulling my leg, but he told me he also wanted
to be in great physical shape for the little striptease number his
character does for my mine.”
Tell me about shooting that scene.
“Initially,
it was pretty easy for me, because I was the one who got the benefits
of Gerard’s act. He stripped down to his boots, socks, boxer shorts and
a pair of suspenders. It was a little tough to get comfortable with, in
the beginning, until Gerry finally said, ‘Let’s just do it, already.
Let’s think of some really funny moves I can do.’”
|
But that scene led to you getting stitches?
“Yeah, out of all the risky stunts and boxing moves I’ve trained for, it was Gerry’s sexy dance that end up drawing my blood. Who said foreplay can’t be dangerous?”
What happened?
“While he was taking off his suspenders, he threw them behind his shoulders, and one of the suspender snaps apparently got caught on something behind him. For a while he was gyrating away, stripping like a pro, until he started to move his body forward. That’s when he realized he was caught on something.... He just kind of yanked on it and it came undone, but I was sitting on the bed, and all of a sudden, I see this suspender snap heading toward my face. It all happened in an instant, and before I knew it, it had popped me right on the face, just inches above my eye. It hurt when it first hit me, but I was just glad that it hadn’t blinded me. I was like, ‘I’m fine, I’m okay,’ until Gerry said, ‘No, darling, you’re bleeding.’”
He must have felt awful.
“He was beside himself. He couldn’t apologize enough. I thought this poor burly Scotsman was going to break down over the accident. After he realized it wasn’t that bad of an injury, he lightened up. He was like, ‘I’ve fought armies and armies of sword-wielding savage soldiers, and the worst thing that happened to me was a couple of nicks and bruises. Of course, when I’m trying to get Hilary all hot, bothered and ready for a good time, I practically put her eye out. I’ll never hear the end of this.’”
Earl Dittman is a Houston-based writer.