Hilary Swank, 52, reveals why she kept her 3rd pregnancy a secret until surprise announcement

Hilary Swank revealed just how she kept her third pregnancy a secret, after surprising fans with the exciting announcement on October 15.

The 52-year-old, who welcomed her twins Aya and Ohm with her husband, Philip Schneider, in 2023, explained that she was able to conceal her pregnancy thanks to the people in her hometown.

Keeping her pregnancy under wraps

"I live in a very small town. It's a town I grew up in, and everyone there has been so just respectful of my privacy, and it hasn't leaked," she said on the Question Everything podcast. "Clearly, I don't stay at home all the time. I was working up until about 17 weeks pregnant, so no one really knew on set either."

As for why she chose not to tell the world about her pregnancy earlier, Hilary explained that she was "a pretty private person" and felt there was "no reason" to share. 

"And then we passed this wonderful diaper bill, and I wanted to show up here, and so I was like, 'Well, hello everybody and meet the baby in my belly,'" the Oscar winner said. The "diaper bill" refers to the bill that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 28 that requires children's diaper manufacturers to disclose every intentionally added ingredient on the packaging.

Hilary announced her third pregnancy via a sweet social media video, and captioned the clip: "A lot of people have been asking what project I'm doing next, this one releases in December."

Hilary Swank's experience of being an older mother 

Hilary has weathered a lot of negativity for being an older mother, both with this pregnancy and when she welcomed her twins at 48. "There's a lot of backlash women get for having children older but not men, which is interesting," she said on The Drew Barrymore Show.

"This was the right time for me. Not everything happens in our own time. We have ideas for timelines for ourselves, and getting pregnant isn't always in our own timeline, right?"

The brunette beauty added: "You can hope and pray for certain things, and things happen when they're supposed to happen. I was very excited, and it was a good time for me because I feel like I had this career that was a 'baby' of mine that I really wanted to give to and devote my time to and not share. And now I can totally devote [myself] to my children."

Hilary shared that she was far more patient now with her kids than she would've been while trying to further her acting career.

"I was 47 when I got pregnant, and I feel like I have a lot more patience, and I've done a lot of my own personal work to be the type of mother I want to be, whereas it would've just been different in my 20s and 30s," she told People.

"I don't think I would've had the patience and the grace that I hopefully can bestow a little bit more [of] now, and a self-awareness in a different way that I don't need to focus on myself anymore in the way that I did at that point."