Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American sports drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman. It is the story of an under-appreciated boxing trainer, his elusive past, and his quest for atonement by helping an underdog amateur boxer 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. Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald , a waitress from a Missouri town in the Ozarks, shows up in the Hit Pit, a run-down Los Angeles gym which is owned and operated by Frankie Dunn , a brilliant but only marginally successful boxing trainer. Maggie asks Dunn to train her, but he angrily responds that he "doesn't train girls." Maggie attempts to win Frankie over by working out tirelessly each day in his gym, even when others discourage her.
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