AceShowbiz - Hilary Swank is glad she was fired from "Beverly Hills, 90210" - because she wouldn't have gone on to win an Oscar for "Boys Don't Cry" if she'd stayed on the show. The "Million Dollar Baby" actress was hired to play single mother Carly Reynolds in the U.S. programme and was told she would be signed up for at least two years.

But Swank was devastated when TV bosses wrote her character out after just 16 episodes in 1998. Now she's opened up about the experience, insisting she is "thankful" she was dropped from the series, because she went on to land a role in "Boys Don't Cry", which won her a Best Actress Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

She tells Total Film magazine, "It is weird. There's a lot of luck involved in a career, so I'm thankful I got fired off of 90210 because three months later I got Boys Don't Cry. I wouldn't have gotten that movie had I stayed on the show, so it was always about trusting fate and learning about the business along the way."