Swank immersed herself in 'Amelia'

NEW YORK — If you're planning a long-distance rendezvous, don't tell Hilary Swank. She might show up and fly you there herself, as she did recently with her wary boyfriend, film agent John Campisi.

"He had a business meeting in Las Vegas, and I went and picked him up. I canceled his flight and I flew to Vegas, with my instructor. He was big-eyed. He's sitting in the back, white-knuckled," Swank says with a giggle.

It's a gambit that might make aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart proud. After all, it's thanks to Earhart, whom Swank plays in the biopic "Amelia," opening Friday, that the two-time Oscar winner went airborne in the first place.

"You can't play Amelia Earhart and not learn how to fly. That's just wrong in every way," says Swank, who plans to earn her pilot's license after she's done promoting the film.

Flying, she says, "is something I take very seriously. I'm not a big sweater, but when I land, my back is drenched. It takes a lot of concentration. It's really exhilarating."

For her, so is acting. On the screen, she has played a boxer and a transgendered teen in roles in 2004's "Million Dollar Baby" and 1999's "Boys Don't Cry" that netted her best-actress Oscars. In person, Swank, 35, is elegant and composed, preferring English breakfast tea with honey and scones — or Italian red wine — to anything more rowdy, she insists. Still, there's a skydiving, plane-flying daredevil lurking within the refined actress clad in a flowered Reem Acra frock and open-toe stilettos.

It's why director Mira Nair cast Swank as Earhart, who disappeared in 1937 while trying to circle the globe. For Nair, Swank was the obvious choice to step into Earhart's cockpit.

"My Amelia is not a fuddy duddy. She's a force of nature. Hilary is full of fun and full of life," Nair says. "I think of Hilary as a spiritual actor, someone who embodies the character from within in a very careful way with a lot of preparation. There's so much about Amelia that exists in newsreels, and Hilary really took that seriously. But the most beautiful part is that it appears transparent. You don't see the work."

Like Earhart, Swank is driven and dedicated, and she knew from an early age what she wanted to do for a living. For her, Earhart was a personal inspiration, an outspoken woman who lived by her own rules.