Hilary Swank

Look at a grainy black-and-white news photograph of Amelia Earhart climbing from her plane after becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She's wearing leather head-to-toe pilot's gear, but has taken off her goggles and is laughing. She could easily pass for two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, who plays her in Mira Nair's biopic Amelia.

"No way," laughs Swank. "Look closely at me. I've a strong jawbone. She has grey eyes, blonde hair, freckles and fair, fair skin, I'm more olive. When they offered me the part, I looked at the cover letter again to make sure it wasn't supposed to be sent to another actress."

Here by a window in late autumn London sunshine, close up in the flesh, dressed in a red top over black jeans and Chanel heels, any similarity is gone: the camera deceives.

"I don't feel we look alike at all," says Swank. She had to whiten her skin, daub on freckles and change her voice to become the legendary aviation pioneer who set off on an around-the-world flight in 1937 and disappeared in the Pacific somewhere beyond New Guinea, never to be heard from again.

What matters far more than likeness is what an actress can bring to a role. Just by being herself, she found she could become Earhart.

There's a flashback showing Earhart as a little girl in a Kansas cornfield gazing up at a planes flying above her in the emptiness of the blue sky.

"That could be me," says Swank. "I remember doing that when I was very young, wondering where the planes were going, and I wanted to be going there too, I wanted to see the world, I wanted to see it all."

She, like Earhart, grew up in a small town in the American midwest. Her family moved to a trailer park when she was six. Her mother brought her to Los Angeles after her father left and they lived out of their car until they saved enough money for an apartment.

"When you come from humble beginnings it makes you an outsider, you want to fight your corner. That's how Amelia got where she did. It's a quality I wouldn't change for the world. It keeps you grounded. I don't ever forget where I've come from. From job to job, I wake up each morning and I'm so excited to go to work."

Coming from Lincoln, Nebraska, helped her land the role of Brandon Teena, the true story of a transsexual who passes as a man in Kimberly Peirce's low-budget Boys Don't Cry.

"She told me she was from Lincoln, as Brandon was, and that she was 21, the same age," recalls Peirce. "I took her and cut her hair and at the end of it, it was like Brandon had been reborn. She stared at me. She said, 'You didn't think I could do it, did you?' I said, 'No'. My producer checked her out. She really did come from Lincoln. But she was 24. So I said to her, 'Look, I'm dying to hire you. But you lied to me. So why did you lie?' She said, 'I had to, Brandon lied'."

Swank's performance won her a best-actress Oscar, ahead of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Annette Bening.

"That's 10 years ago, and I'm still acting. It's a reminder that life is so short, it just happens and it's over. You only have one life and if you're not doing what you like, what's the point?"

She followed up with a second Oscar five years later as the girl boxer who wins over her grouchy coach in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. She's drawn to roles that defy conventional perceptions of women's role in ­society.

"I do see a thread in these characters I've chosen to play. When you read a script there has to be a fire there that makes you say, 'Oooh this scares me, I don't know that I can do it'. I'll keep waking thinking I'm messing it up."

Earhart achieved celebrity in the aftermath of women getting the vote by standing on her own and speaking out, shrewdly marketed by her publisher husband George Puttnam (Richard Gere), a pioneer in public relations who she'd only marry on her own terms. "He said 'okay, I love you enough to allow you to be you'," says Swank. "That to me is true love."

Earhart openly had an affair with pilot Gene Vidal – played in the film by Ewan McGregor – so much so that his five-year-old son Gore, the future writer, pleaded with her to be his dad's wife as well as Puttnam's.

"She was ahead of her time. She made no apologies for living her life the way she wanted, which wasn't easy for a woman to do in a male-dominated society. Amelia is obviously a period piece, yet it's so not."

Earhart became a style icon with her own line of sleek but practical, wrinkle-proof washable clothes with simple lines. She endorsed everything from luggage to Lucky Strike cigarettes, playing on her nickname 'Lady Lindy', which she earned because of her resemblance to fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh. "She understood that in order to pursue her passion for flying she had to work the business side of it."

Swank, who divorced her actor husband Chad Lowe (brother of Rob) in 2006 and subsequently dated her agent John Campisi – not unlike Earhart with Puttnam – feels the same about her career.

"With art comes commerce," she says. "I act because I love to tell stories. But in order to be successful you have to involve yourself in both sides." She executive-produced Amelia and her two previous films, Freedom Writers and Cecilia Ahern's romantic comedy PS I Love You.

"I don't just throw my name on these films. I work hard to get all the right elements together. I make 'Hello, I'm Hilary Swank' phone calls. People like to hear the passion behind a film. It makes a difference."

She's just finished shooting Betty Anne Waters, a true story about a working mother who put herself through law school to free her wrongfully convicted brother.

"Like Erin Gruwell, the teacher I played in Freedom Writers, she's still alive. It's a love story between a brother and a sister and how they are there for each other through extraordinary difficulties. I think you need one person in life that believes in you. I know I do."

Amelia opens on Friday