The Guardian: Hilary Swank has already raced through a full day’s schedule before the LA restaurant where we meet has had time to switch its menu from breakfast to lunch. She has taken her father to a doctor’s appointment, held a conference call for her new clothing line, Mission Statement, and run to a meeting about one of the three TV shows she is currently producing, along with three films. “Constant everything!” she grins, looking casual and efficient in a sundress. She has arrived just in time to order a piece of salmon – to go. The two-time Oscar winner still has a lot left to accomplish. Swank, 44, has been having a busy summer. If you haven’t seen her for a while, that is due to her making a necessary choice. Just before Christmas 2014, her father Stephen, a former chief master sergeant in the Oregon air national guard, underwent a life-saving lung transplant. For three years, Swank was his sole live-in carer, which meant saying no to Hollywood – or, as she phrases it: “I was saying yes to something else that I wanted to be a part of.”
Today, her dad is “really good,” she says. “It’s a long time coming.” So, too, is this moment in which the feverishly curious actor can finally make things happen. One of those is learning to tap dance, she says, pulling up a YouTube video of a group called the Syncopated Ladies, headed by one of her tap mentors, doing a staccato-glam routine over a Beyoncé speech about the female right to vote.
“I’ve always wanted to tap dance since I was 20 – actually, since I was a teenager.” When she married the social venture entrepreneur Jason Schneider in California earlier this month, the couple surprised guests by performing a tap routine.