Since then, she's found fame on the big screen and won Oscars for "Boys Don't Cry" and "Million Dollar Baby."
Thursday evening, she returns to ABC, in "Alaska Daily."
"I look at (it) as a human drama that follows a disgraced journalist, Eileen Fitzgerald, on her road to redemption," says the show's creator Tom McCarthy.
He won an Academy Award for writing "Spotlight"-which also won the top award as "Best Picture" of 2015.
"Tom McCarthy had me at hello," Hilary Swank told WABC Entertainment Reporter Sandy Kenyon. "He's got an eye for, obviously movies, but also for the long game. Like his creativity, it's like this river that just flows, and it flows into everything he does and it will flow right into a series."
The series is about more than just the redemption of a single journalist.
"It's a story about how the missing and murdered indigenous women crisis is being largely ignored," is how the character played by Jeff Perry explains it in the first episode.
The issue came as a revelation to Tom McCarthy.
"Truth be told I really underestimated the profound tragedy and pain associated with that crisis," he said.
The audience learns about the crisis along with Swank's character who is teamed-up with another reporter played by Grace Dove who hails from one of the First Nations of Canada.
"To represent indigenous people in the way that we deserve, it's incredible," Dove said.
"Alaska Daily" airs Thursday nights on ABC. Check your local listings.