HILARY SWANK TEACHES FREEDOM

Hilary Swank plays a teacher who inspires her racially charged students in the true story Freedom Writers.

For most of us high school was not easy to get through, especially for the students at Wilson High in the film Freedom Writers who also had the burden of being caught up in gang warfare.

Academy award winner Hilary Swank who is often attracted to true stories based on passionate people talks about how she portrayed Erin Gruwell, the real educator in the story.

“It wasn’t for me getting mannerisms down necessarily. It was just finding the passion behind her, to get that across. And her love for the kids. More than physical it was a mental thing that I was trying to capture and Richard, our writer director had written it so eloquently and in a way that all I needed to do was say the words.”

Most of the students in Freedom Writers were written off by the education system but luckily they had a special teacher who believed in them encouraging them to rise up out of their low self-esteem to attain higher knowledge.

“Erin is certainly in my eyes a hero and I know in her kids’ eyes she’s quite a hero too because she changed their lives. It’s amazing to me how one person can make the difference. Just one person can change an event in a person’s life and change their life forever.”

Freedom Writers also stars Patrick Dempsey as Hilary’s husband. You can also see Hilary in another true-life story Boys Don’t Cry making its debut on Lifetime television this weekend.