Hilary Swank has allegedly apologized after a tense encounter with a woman she thought was taking her photo at LAX airport in Los Angeles.
“At baggage claim, I was walking next to Hilary Swank,” Jada Bafus told The Daily Mail on Wednesday, December 10, per Page Six. “And I did a double take on her because it’s Hilary Swank and I am a fan of her movies and stuff.”
Bafus had been at the airport with her sons Mason, 7, and Jack, 4, whom she was taking to Disneyland on a Make-a-Wish vacation. The boys have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic disorder that causes progressive loss of muscle.
Bafus said she took out her phone “because I got distracted” while trying to find her kids and husband.
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“I just looked, like, you know, I was trying to call my husband,” she recalled. “I wasn’t taking a picture.”
According to Page Six, Bafus had previously described the alleged encounter via a recent Instagram post, quoting Swank, 51, as saying, “You got what you needed? Get what you came for? Enjoy that picture.”
“Ma’am … I wasn’t trying a picture of you,” Bafus wrote, according to the outlet. “I was trying to find my 2 terminally ill boys at baggage claim. But thanks for poking at a stressed mom on her kid’s Make-a-Wish trip. Iconic timing because she lived here in Spokane long ago!”
Adding an upside-down smiley face emoji, Bafus added: “So random!”
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In her interview with The Daily Mail, Bafus said that Swank “hurt my feelings because I was starting my son’s Make-A-Wish trip, which she wouldn’t have known, but just one of those situations where it was one of my first encounters with a celebrity so I thought it was a little comical.”
She added, however, that the two-time Oscar winner reached out directly to apologize to her via Instagram and explained that she had not wanted her 2-year-old twins, Aya and Ohm, being photographed.
“I did not expect Hilary Swank to directly talk to me,” Bafus said. “It was just, like, a ‘Woah.’ I was taken aback.”
Bafus’ husband, Bryan, called the interaction “unexpected” and wondered why Swank would “snap back at anybody when you’re in that profession” but noted that they’re “not upset” at her.
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NewsPlop has reached out to Swank for comment.
Swank, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles in 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby, married entrepreneur Philip Schneider in 2018. In April 2023, they welcomed their twins, a boy and a girl, whom she’s called a “miracle.”
She announced her pregnancy on ABC’s Good Morning America in October 2022, saying, “This is something that I’ve been wanting for a long time. I can’t believe it.”