Million Dollar Baby

'Alaska Daily' star Hilary Swank opens up about her regrets and finding success so young after winning an Oscar for 'Boys Don't Cry.'

I was staying at a hotel that was four hotels down from where the ceremony happened, and I was told to get in a car to go there. I had a parrot, I would knit, and I would go to craft shows. I was learning how to bake pies — how to make a nice crispy crust and get the middle just right. I'm a fierce advocate for people being themselves, but I was so young that I was almost scared out of being myself. My regrets are from when I was shot out of a cannon [after winning my first Oscar]. I was getting a lot of tomboy roles, a lot of sports roles. I had to refocus on that and make sure that I didn't worry about expectations, because that can kill creativity. The journey has got to be the reward and the experience, not the end game. “I had a fear of not living to my fullest potential for a long time. And I think that's when you get in trouble if you're trying to match that. “It took to getting into my 40s to really be confident and walk securely in my own shoes,” she says. Though she’d been acting since she was 15, appearing in the fourth installment of the Karate Kid series and Beverly Hills, 90210, it wasn’t “a slow buildup” to becoming a household name.