Academy Award for Best Picture

2004

Million Dollar Baby

Release dates

December 15, 2004

Starring

Clint Eastwood

Hilary Swank

Morgan Freeman

Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 sports drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman. This movie is about a boxing trainer who is not appreciated, the mistakes that haunt him from his past and his quest for atonement by helping an underdog amateur boxer (the film's title character) achieve her dream of becoming a professional. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

The screenplay was written by Paul Haggis, based on short stories by F.X. Toole, the pen name of fight manager and "cutman" Jerry Boyd. Originally published under the title Rope Burns, the stories have since been republished under the film's title.