“Who knows if Jeff really said that or not,” opines Swank, toeing a careful line. “I think that’s still up for debate. He says he didn’t say it, and I know that people attribute things to me that I didn’t say. But speaking in general, I think it’s really naive to say, ‘Oh, a woman’s vehicle is not successful,’ because men’s movies have failed at the box office too. Look, I don’t want to name names, but there’s been lots of movies starring men—with big names!—that didn’t do well.”
When the topic turns to the fizzle of her last three films, you can practically see Swank slip on her boxing gloves. “It’s the business of a lottery, for lack of a better word. All you have control over is how hard you choose to work,” she says. “After that, you do your press, and then you let it go. Of course you want something you’ve given birth to to do well. But why sit there and lament over what you don’t have control over?”
Letting go and moving on is exactly what she’s done in her personal life. Nearly two years after filing for divorce from actor Chad Lowe, her husband of eight years, Swank is dating her former agent, John Campisi. The two were first outed in the summer of 2006 on vacation in Italy, where they stayed at Donatella Versace’s house on Lake Como and then in Rome. (Campisi, a 40-year-old divorced father of one, was her CAA agent at the time; he’s still with the agency but no longer one of her official reps.)
Over the past year, the couple has been increasingly open about their relationship. Campisi accompanied Swank when she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last January, and more recently, he’s tagged along at events as run-of-the-mill (for A-listers, anyway) as an Escada store opening, a press event for Pantene and a lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air she hosted for Guerlain.
About six months ago, Swank—who lived in Manhattan for eight years and was considered something of a celebrity fixture in the West Village—made the move to the West Coast, where Campisi is based, plunking down a reported $5.8 million for a house in the Pacific Palisades. While she won’t say she moved to L.A. to be close to Campisi, it’s hard not to assume he’s part of the equation—especially since the reasons she does give for abandoning the Big Apple are far from convincing. “I looked and looked and looked for a place in New York. I just didn’t find anything,” she insists. “Prices have just skyrocketed!” (For the record, she and Lowe sold their four-floor town house on Charles Street for $7.5 million last January.)
