“Million Dollar Baby” star Hilary Swank’s marriage is down for the count.
The two-time Oscar-winner and her limelight-challenged hubby, Chad Lowe, yesterday announced that they were splitting after eight years of marriage – amid rumors that he was having an increasingly hard time grappling with her fame and fortune.
“Hilary and Chad have decided to separate, but they are hopeful they will be able to get through this tough time,” Swank’s manager and close friend, Troy Nankin, said in a statement.
A source said the New York duo, whose favorite local pastimes had recently included sipping Dom Perignon at Montrachet and enjoying frothy cappuccinos at Moby’s Teany to Go, had been having serious problems for awhile.
They finally secretly agreed to a trial separation several months ago, according to TV’s “Extra.”
Then, after spending New Year’s apart, the pair sadly decided to go public and make their split official, the source added.
Swank shares a tony townhouse with her hubby in Greenwich Village, as well as a posh Malibu pad.
She had been frequently spotted working out at Village gyms to keep her bod buff, and enjoying sidewalk shopping along trendy Prince Street in SoHo in a hunt for bargains.
But the busy actress has lately been stuck in Los Angeles filming “Freedom Writers,” a flick about an inspirational school teacher in a tough neighborhood, while her husband has been traveling between L.A. and Manhattan working on his latest movie, “Beautiful Ohio,” a source told The Post.
Asked whether either of the couple was involved with someone else, the source insisted, “There’s not a third person.
“People have problems in their life sometimes – that’s all this is,” the source said.
The Midwestern sweethearts had what many had deemed a startlingly solid relationship, given the demanding pressures of Hollywood that only intensified after Swank’s first surprise Oscar coup in 1999.
Then, Swank, 31, won the coveted Best Actress nod for her riveting, painful role as Brandon Teena in “Boys Don’t Cry,” in which she played a girl pretending to be a boy who is eventually brutally raped and murdered by male pals.
The Nebraska native and bashful girl-next-door-type initially seemed to take her newfound fame in stride, remaining loyal to the career-floundering Lowe, 37, whose brother is hunky ex-“West Wing” co-star, Rob Lowe.
The first signs of possible stress in the marriage were said to have surfaced in 2000 on the set of “The Affair of the Necklace” in romantic Rome, as rumors emerged of sexual sparks between Swank and her smoldering co-star, Adrien Brody.
But a source close to the pair yesterday insisted that nothing ever developed between the stars.
Even today, “they don’t socialize. They’re not friends,” the source said.
Still, Swank later infamously forgot to thank her hubby on stage while accepting her “Boys Don’t Cry” Oscar.
But Swank and Lowe stayed together, and during the actress’ acceptance speech for her second Academy Award as the gusty pugilist in “Million Dollar Baby” last year, she glowingly crowed to her beaming hubby in the crowd:
“Chad, you’re my everything.”
While Lowe won an Emmy as AIDS-stricken Jesse McKenna in TV’s “Life Goes On,” he never achieved the level of success his wife has.