Hilary Swank is now a former Palisadian. She’s shown here with her Oscar for “Million Dollar Baby.”
Hilary Swank has a history in Pacific Palisades.
Years ago, she was a frequent customer at the beloved Mort’s Deli, a few blocks up Swarthmore Avenue from the one-thousand square-foot house where she lived at the time. Mort’s was where Hank’s restaurant is now.
On the February 2005 morning after she won her second Academy Award — this one, for “Million Dollar Baby” — she brought the statuette to Mort’s to share with the regulars. (Her first Oscar was for the 1999 film, “Boys Don’t Cry.”)
When winning that second Oscar the night before breakfast at Mort’s, she looked back on her life in her thank-you speech and said “I don’t know what I did in this life to deserve all this. I’m just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream. I never thought this would ever happen, let alone be nominated. And a working actor, for that matter. And now, this. I thank the Academy. I’m eternally grateful for this great honor.” And she said was inspired “beyond words” by the work of her fellow nominees.
Two years later, in 2007, Swank was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
That same year, Swank left her cozy cottage on Swarthmore for a place more than six times the size — a hillside home with an ocean view in the Paseo Miramar section of the Palisades.
Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Swank is no longer a Palisadian. A November 5 article, “Actress Hilary Swank to Sell L.A. Home,” quotes listing agent Zach Goldsmith of Hilton & Hyland as saying Swank has put her Paseo Miramar home up for sale for $10.5 million.
The hacienda-style house was originally built in the 1920s and the gated and walled property sits on a bluff with ocean views from almost every room of the 6,700-square-foot home.
When Swank was living in France in 2012 and 2013, the house was put on the market for $9.495 million, but then the actress decided to return to the United States and took the Palisades listing off the market.
When she initially purchased it, Swank said she loved the history associated with the house, such as hidden compartments, where Prohibition-era owners may have stashed alcohol. She added a pool and hot tub, a loggia, a fire pit and an outdoor kitchen — and a 16-seat movie theater, lounge and concession stand, with an antique popcorn machine, candy and beer.
In 2016, Swank bought property in Colorado. She and husband, Philip Schneider, moved there last year. Swank, who was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, is a longtime advocate for animal rescue and her new home has more space for her five dogs, two parrots and a horse.
She grew up in Bellingham, Washington. While in school, she competed in swimming in the Junior Olympics and Washington State Championships. She was also ranked fifth in the state in all-around gymnastics.
Her parents separated when she was 15, and Swank and her mother moved to the Los Angeles area, where they lived out of their car until her mother had enough money to rent an apartment. Swank enrolled in South Pasadena High School, but later dropped out.
Swank explained, “I felt like such an outsider. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I didn’t belong in any way. I didn’t even feel like the teachers wanted me there. I just felt like I wasn’t seen or understood.” According to her IMDB page, she attended Santa Monica College before landing her first film role in 1992’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
More recently she played a detective in the film “Fatale,” a 2020 psychological thriller. She also starred in the Netflix series “Away.” And The Hollywood Reporter says she’ll star as a newspaper reporter in an ABC drama series set in Alaska. The show is expected to premiere in the 2022-2023 season.