Snubbed by BFCA, HFPA, and critics’ awards, was Conviction star Hilary Swank a wee bit nervous until her startling Screen Actors Guild nom today?
“Y’know, I don’t know if nervous is the right word,” says a chipper Hilary. “I’m just completely floored.”
“It’s kinda bittersweet, ’cause we carried each other on this film. Sam [Rockwell] did the best work of his career. We get in the sandbox and we just play,” she tells THR.
As the unjustly jailed brother her character fights to free, Rockwell got a BFCA award nom for supporting actor.
“It’s a tough year, there are amazing performances.” Hers was tough too. “Getting that Massachusetts accent down was a killer. The movie takes place over 18 years — how do you change physically and emotionally over 18 years? The most difficult were the prison scenes [with Rockwell] shot with two cameras rolling. Tony Goldwyn would say Cut! and I’d feel like we were plopped back down to earth. We lost of our hardest days of filming when the film got X-rayed at the airport.”
But the movie was worth reshooting, even before SAG saluted her work. “It was like a master class or something for us. Sometimes, instead of laughing [as the script required], I’d burst into tears, ’cause of the conviction — wrong choice of words — the heart of what Sam was doing.”
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