IN KEEPING with her reputation for delving deep into research for a role, actress Hilary Swank took flying lessons to prepare playing the lead in Amelia. The movie, also starring Richard Gere, opens in cinemas on Thursday.

'You can't play Amelia Earhart and not learn how to fly,' Swank says simply. But of course during filming, because of insurance rules, she was not allowed to actually fly the planes herself and was limited to just taxiing the aircraft.

The 35-year-old, who famously spent a month living as a man for her Oscar-winning role as transgendered male Brandon Teena in the 1999 indie flick Boys Don't Cry, also cut her hair short and lost weight to look like Earhart.

Clad in a slinky black dress at a recent interview at the Casa Del Mar in Los Angeles, her uncanny resemblance to the famous aviatrix is now less pronounced: Her hair has grown to reach her shoulders and she has added a few kilos to her lanky frame.

While she might not have been allowed to fly the planes in the film, Swank says her flying lessons paid off in another way - providing an understanding of Earhart's zeal for taking to the skies.

'She loved flying because she was free of the constraints she felt on the ground. But more than that, she was driven by the promise of always trying something new. That's why she was always going after a new record and I get that.'

Read the full report in Wednesday's edition of The Straits Times' LIFE!.