Hilary Swank Acts Up in Suffragette City

Despite her unquestionable feminine beauty, actress Hilary Swank is no delicate flower when it comes to career choices. As Americans ponder the nation at war in a climate of heightened political awareness, HBO's Iron Jawed Angels features the stalwart Swank, 29, in the role of activist Alice Paul, whose leadership of the women's suffrage movement led to the constitutional amendment awarding American women the right to vote.

"I read the script and was immediately moved and inspired," says Swank of Paul and her compatriots Lucy Burns is played by Frances O'Connor; Molly Parker, Julia Ormond and Anjelica Houston also star. Patrick Dempsey plays a political cartoonist and Paul's romantic interest, who she ultimately leaves behind in order to devote herself fully to her cause.

"It really interested me that Alice has to make a choice between love and her drive in life, which is to help women become empowered," says Swank, who won the Oscar for best actress in 1999 (Boys Don't Cry), and has been married to actor Chad Lowe for six years; the couple, who live in New York, have no children.

"That's a hard choice that a lot of people still have to make. Especially women either love or career, career or love. Women have to be more driven than men to succeed, and it's not easy to have it all," she says.

It's 1912. Philadelphia. Paul, a Quaker, and Burns take their ardent agenda to the National American Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Carrie Chapman Catt (Angelica Houston). With the group behind them, Paul and Burns raise their own money to recruit volunteers by funding events to promote women's suffrage. Paul persuades labor lawyer Inez Mulholland (Ormond) to lead a parade that incites a minor riot. Paul publishes a newspaper calling for the boycott of President Woodrow Wilson, and eventually, with Burns, forms the National Woman's Party (NWP).

When an NWP protest disrupts President Wilson's speech to Congress, Paul, Burns and others are sentenced to 60 days in a Virginia prison and thrown into solitary confinement. Paul goes on a hunger strike and is denied counsel, placed in a straitjacket and subjected to examination in the psychiatric ward. Upon return to the prison's general population, Paul leads the suffragettes on a hunger strike. When Paul reveals through a note slipped to a visitor that the suffragettes are being force-fed by the warden, Wilson is pressed into supporting the suffrage amendment and releasing the women.

"[Iron Jawed Angels] transcends time. It's not so much about a certain era as it is about a conviction of the heart, and what's right and what's just," says Swank, who educated herself about the pivotal events through reading.

"I don't want to admit this, but I didn't know a lot about this movement, so it was a brush-up on history for me, as well as an engaging story about women and their relationships and their strength and courage," says the actress, who was equally inspired by what she refers to as "an amazing cast of women who are inspirations to me" and a director (Katja von Garnier) who was "a force of nature."

While HBO is counting on capturing and empowering an audience of equally driven women, says Swank, "I can only hope [the film is] going to be inspiring for girls of all ages, women of all ages. I certainly felt a strong bond and wanted to call all my girlfriends after I read the script."