Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), a waitress from a Missouri town in the Ozarks, shows up at the Hit Pit, a rundown Los Angeles gym owned and operated by Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood), an old cantankerous Irish-American boxing trainer, revealed to be estranged from his daughter. Maggie asks Frankie to train her, but he refuses as he doesn't train women, and tells her she's "too old" to begin a boxing career. Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris (Morgan Freeman), Frankie's friend and employee—and the film's narrator—encourages and helps her.