Top 70 Hilary Swank Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You only have one life and if you’re not doing what you love, what’s the point?”

— Hilary Swank

2. “I think we have a choice every single day in how we want to live our life. You wake up and you make your choice of what you want to do with your day that’s going to help you achieve your dream.”

— Hilary Swank

3. “As long as we dare to dream and don’t get in the way of ourselves, anything is possible – there’s truly no end to where our dreams can take us.”

— Hilary Swank

4. “This is my one and only life and it’s a great and terrible and short and endless thing and none of us come out of it alive.”

— Hilary Swank

5. “I wouldn’t change my past for anything, because I think it’s made me who I am. I’m so enormously grateful for all that I have in my life.”

— Hilary Swank

6. “You can change your fate. You can sit back, or you can go after your life and all that you want it to be.”

— Hilary Swank

7. “I believe that the definition of luck is when preparation meets with opportunity.”

— Hilary Swank

8. “What do dreams know of boundaries?”

— Hilary Swank

9. “I’m just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream. I never thought this would ever happen.”

— Hilary Swank

10. “One thing I’ve learned: You never know where life is taking you, but it’s taking you.”

— Hilary Swank

11. “I’m a risk-taker. It’s where my passion lies, so I don’t want to play it safe. That means I’m going to fail sometimes.”

— Hilary Swank

12. “All you have to remember is ‘audition’ is synonymous with ’opportunity. I mean, if you absolutely hate auditioning, do you also hate opportunities? That wouldn’t make much sense.”

— Hilary Swank

13. “To me, working out is literally like eating a meal or drinking water or breathing.”

— Hilary Swank

14. “My biggest growth has been sitting with things that are uncomfortable and dealing with them.”

— Hilary Swank

15. “I wake up so full of life and feeling so alive and so full of joy when I get to go to a set and tell a story. I just – I couldn’t imagine not having that, and what a gift it’s been in my life.”

— Hilary Swank

16. “I am a competitive person with myself. I always find new goals to achieve, new challenges to breakthrough, and I try and do something new every day. And I’m highly competitive with myself.”

— Hilary Swank

17. “I love my job, I love being an actor and stepping into the shoes of different characters and exploring their lives. It’s enriched my life extremely. I’ve learned more about myself and the ways of life through being an actor.”

— Hilary Swank

18. “I really chase the things that I want.”

— Hilary Swank

19. “I think writing letters is a lost art, but nowadays it’s something that means even more, because it’s so easy to communicate in so many different ways. But I find a love letter can even be a little post-it note stuck in your pocket, with a sentence or a few words.”

— Hilary Swank

20. “I grew up in a trailer park in Bellingham, Washington.”

— Hilary Swank

21. “I don’t think people should have boundaries put on them, by themselves or society or another gender, because it’s our birthright to experience life in whatever way we feel best suits us.”

— Hilary Swank

22. “I think about how I’m spending my money, and I like to spend on my family.”

— Hilary Swank

23. “The truth is, after Boys Don’t Cry, I realized how few and far between the great roles are. I am beyond thankful for finding Million Dollar Baby.”

— Hilary Swank

24. “When I stopped wanting my New Year’s Eve to be perfect, to bring in the New Year right, is when it started working out right. When I was young, I was always looking for the best party to be at, to ring in the New Year, and I always ended up in the car going, “Happy New Year.””

— Hilary Swank

25. “It’s how you look at beauty. Is it only an outward appearance with hair and makeup and a hot body, or is it something deeper than that?”

— Hilary Swank

26. “You’re always going to make mistakes. That’s life. You just want to grow from them and try to make as few as possible. That’s why you do reach out and ask people for help, where needed.”

— Hilary Swank

27. “I don’t believe in the death penalty. I believe that there are other people as we speak right now in prison, wrongfully accused, who could serve such a fate. That is injustice at its greatest.”

— Hilary Swank

28. “If there’s someone that I just wan to work with in the future, I set a general meeting and I say, “I’m a really big fan. I want to meet you. I’d love to collaborate with you someday and hopefully you’ll remember that for the next time you have something that I could be right for.””

— Hilary Swank

29. “I cut coupons, love specials and believe in buying toilet paper and toothpaste in bulk. It’s just who I am.”

— Hilary Swank

30. “Growing up in a lower-income family, you don’t have the resources to make ends meet and you have to find creative ways to get by.”

— Hilary Swank

31. “Making a movie is you’re really only as good as your weakest link, so when everyone’s working at their best and it actually comes together, it’s an extraordinary thing because it doesn’t always.”

— Hilary Swank

32. “My most annoying question is ‘Hilary, are you ever going to play a pretty girl?’”

— Hilary Swank

33. “I really enjoy playing with someone else and whether it’s chess or tennis or games, I love card games. I love that, but I think there’s something so important to gain from winning and losing and learning how to lose and how you can be better from that.”

— Hilary Swank

34. “I’m always scared to death that I won’t do a role justice. But fear can be a great motivator.”

— Hilary Swank

35. “I ended up dropping out of high school. I’m a high school dropout, which I’m not proud to say,... I had some teachers that I still think of fondly and were amazing to me. But I had other teachers who said, ‘You know what? This dream of yours is a hobby. When are you going to give it up?’ I had teachers who I could tell didn’t want to be there. And I just couldn’t get inspired by someone who didn’t want to be there.”

— Hilary Swank

36. “I haven’t tucked a sock in my pants for three years.”

— Hilary Swank

37. “I had to fight my whole life to break out of my circumstances. That’s just part of my makeup.”

— Hilary Swank

38. “My relaxation has always been my animals – going to the dog park with them, going to the beach.”

— Hilary Swank

39. “I’m certainly not very book smart, but I started traveling at 16, and it has enriched me in ways I could never begin to explain.”

— Hilary Swank

40. “There’s no negatives. You just have to trust that what’s happening in your life is unfolding in exactly the right way.”

— Hilary Swank

41. “Few people know this about me, but I love baking pies.”

— Hilary Swank

42. “I bring my dogs on set with me, and my little dog Karoo is smart as a whip. She knows where the craft-services food tables are, so anytime I can’t find her, I know she has found her way to that area. She’s a funny dog.”

— Hilary Swank

43. “Sometimes you have to get to the heart of a character through your heart. Your own heart. And it’s what makes us similar and what makes us different.”

— Hilary Swank

44. “I love to travel. I’m a curious person.”

— Hilary Swank

45. “It’s give-and-take and back-and-forth, that constantly allows you to grow as an artist and as a human being.”

— Hilary Swank

46. “I look back and I look at all the opportunities that I’ve had to work really hard and really challenge myself, and I like to do things that scare me. I like to do things that I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do. I need the help of talented people around me. I love that it’s a collaboration.”

— Hilary Swank

47. “I never know what my next thing is going to be, and I’m not out there specifically searching for one thing in particular. I’m just looking for something that’s new and different. It could be a drama or a comedy, I just want to challenge myself and work with people that inspire me.”

— Hilary Swank

48. “I like to play women who blaze trails.”

— Hilary Swank

49. “I believe in talent, and you believe in who you cast and help them go the distance.”

— Hilary Swank

50. “There’s so much more to life than looking a certain way.”

— Hilary Swank