10 Infamous Times Actors Refused To Break Character

When actress Hilary Swank nabbed the role of trans man Brandon Teena in director Kimberly Peirce’s biographical drama Boys Don’t Cry, she began staying in character even before filming commenced.

At the insistence of Peirce, Swank fully transformed into a boy and lived as a male for a month in the lead up to filming. To do so Swank employed many of tactics Teena himself had used to pass as male including cutting her hair short and ‘strapping and packing’ –that is, binding her breasts and stuffing socks in her pants to look manly in all the right places.

Swank’s new look was so convincing that even her neighbours didn’t recognise her and assumed the ‘young man’ hanging around her home was her visiting brother. She remained in character once she arrived on set too and was introduced to her fellow cast members in character and as a male and never let them see her out of costume during the shoot.

According to the crew, Swank was so absorbed by the role that she practically lost herself. Producer Eva Kolodner even went so far as to say she felt she never really met the actress while filming: “She was immersed in this boyness. She left everything of Hilary somewhere else.”

Losing herself so deeply did prove to have an upside, however, when Swank was rewarded for her efforts with a Best Actress win at the Oscars.