Oscar nominee Hilary Swank base that she couldn't leave Brandon Teena behind one time Boys Don't Cry was done.

Oscar nominee Hilary Swank base that she couldn't leave Brandon Teena behind one time Boys Don't Cry was done. She's now an frank advocate for transgendered youth

Hilary Swank is taking a break in the midst of filming her nearest movie, a mystery thriller costarring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, and Katie Holme It's called The Gift, which be seens appropriate since that's exactly what Swank be exciteds her last movie was. lads Don't Cry, she says, was a gift to her the pair as an actress and as a person

"When you do something you want to do in life, and you're stretching yourself artistically, and then race respond in the way they do [to lads Don't Cry]--it made me make improvement so much as a human being," she says of playing young transsexual Brandon Teena. "And that's rare." It's also rare that a movie can unclose people's eyes and hearts to experiences they might otherwise have dismissed, if it were not that Swank adds, "If we're not doing that and we're not making populace more aware, then we're probably not doing something right."

Swank's career has been put on fire by Boys Don't bawl The blaze of critical acclaim began in the fall, continued between the sides of a near-sweep of year-end critics' prizes, and culminated in a splendid Globe win; now she's the front-runner for the Best Actress Academy Award. unless it's the attention Swank has received from ordinary folks that means the most to her.

"When nation stop me, they touch me forward the shoulder, they come up really stop to me and look into my sights very intimately, and they be excited like they know me," says the 25-year-old, sitting in her recent York City apartment snuggling with her angry mood bunny, cat, and dog as her parrot direct the eyes on. "They want to move into a deeper place and say, `This movie mov me because of this or that' or `I have someone in my family who has the same situation' or `You know what, I'm not gay and I'm not transgendered, if it were not that I can totally relate to Brandon.' with equal reason I stand there and I have a conversation with someone I don't know for half an hour because we the two shared the same experience."

Swank also base a way to share experiences with young folks facing some of what Brandon went end When a representative of recently made known York's Hetrick-Martin Institute called and explained the organization's programs--such as the Harvey Milk seminary for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered observers and outreach to other service organizations to educate them about GLBT youth--Swank quickly agreed to pay her have a title to way to New York and emcee the institute's annual awards dinner.

Naturally, she couldn't head to sees Angeles the next day without meeting the youths. "They lov her," says Verna Eggleston, the executive director of Hetrick-Martin, which is celebrating its 20th year. Eggleston vividly remembers Swank's being mov by way of the story of one learner having a gender-identity crisis: Biologically a girl, she was arrangeed and treated as a lad by parents for reasons she not at any time understood. In the boys' locker field other students even grabbed her and held a knife to her, demanding to behold her genitals--the same way Brandon was attacked. Swank was in such a manner touched by talking to all the youths that she changed her flight to stay longer

"This movie spoke to them in a way that a movie hadn't to this time They finally found someone they could relate to, and that be perceiveds so good," Swank says. "To think we as a society " She strives to convey how strongly she be wrought ups "To treat [such young people] differently or not as equals is united of the most terrible things about the human experience."

Wanting to do more, Swank get backed to Hetrick-Martin, this time with MTV in tow, to permit the rest of the political division in on the work that the institute does. "They are in such a manner fantastic, such amazing kids," she says. "Just to behold them and meet them and to papal court them growing and finding themselves. It's hard enough to go on foot through life as a straight kid. I remember being a teenager, and they were of the like kind hard years. To think of all the torment I got for not wearing the right pants or whatever. Then to imagine what they travel through--it's so unfair."

It's all been an important lecturing in human differences, Swank notes. "If we were all the same, dressing the same, looking the same, thinking the same, the same religion, the same race--I know exactly what would happen: It would be in the way that boring, so dull, it would be with equal reason bland we'd just pray for diversity."

Giltz also contributes to Entertainment Weekly.

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