Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category
“Fitness is a part of life. It should be a part of everyone’s daily routine. I do try to workout and be a fit person,” declares Elizabeth Banks to Healthy Hollywood.
Healthy Hollywood caught up with the ultra fit actress at the launch of Reebok’s new campaign – “The Sport of Fitness Has Arrived.” The fitness giant is teaming up with CrossFit, an intense boot camp style workout.
Banks, along with her “Man On A Ledge” co-star Ed Burns, sweated out together with a 9-minute CrossFit workout, which included rapid rounds of kettlebell swings, box jumps, and burpees (start in standing position and jump out to a plank). “I actually do a lot of this already. Which is why I’m really excited to learn some newer techniques,” reveals Elizabeth, who adds, “I do a lot of resistance training and little bit of weight training. I don’t do a ton of cardio because I try and mix the cardio into the actual workout, just like they do here in CrossFit.”
At 37, Elizabeth admits her body is changing and needs to work harder on keeping toned. “It’s all about keeping the core strong. I do think, especially as I get older, it’s really important to just be strong.”
Plus, with her one-two movie hits, the action-packed “Man On A Ledge” and the upcoming “Hunger Games,” Elizabeth has been super busy. Yet, she tries to never let her fitness or nutrition fall by the wayside. “I do have some rules. I don’t drink soda. I don’t drink a lot of dairy. I stay away from a lot of white things like pasta and bread. I don’t have ice cream – but I will eat cupcakes until the cows come home.”
After years of unsuccessful attempts to expand her family, Elizabeth Banks finally got to experience What to Expect When You’re Expecting — at least on screen.
But off, when the actress and her husband Max Handelman eventually decided to travel down the path of gestational surrogacy, Banks kept her eyes on the prize: her son.
“It helps that other moms had said that once they had their babies, they forgot they were ever pregnant,” she says in the March issue of Women’s Health.
“So once my focus became the baby and not the pregnancy, it was a very easy decision.”
Thrilled to have welcomed Felix last March, the couple still make it a point to carve out plenty of couple time.
Fortunately, 19 years into their relationship — and co-owners of a production company — the pair have mastered a system.
“Working together provides a lot of balance in our life and it’s a way for us to [see each other], because I travel so much for work,” the Man on a Ledge star, 37, explains.
In addition to the demands of her blossoming career, the delicate balance of baby and her marriage allows Banks — who plays Effie Trinket in the highly anticipated Hunger Games film adaptation – to be a “good role model” for the life she leads.
“I have an amazing marriage and it will be long-lasting. I think I’m a good mom,” she says. “I could run for office, no problem, because there are no skeletons in my closet. Not that I would run for office…”
Up, up, up! It’s going to be a big, big, big movie.
The Hunger Games opens March 23, and there’s been a lot of speculation about how the silver-screen version will compare to Suzanne Collins’ books.
Elizabeth Banks, who plays Effie Trinket in the film, said that fans of Katniss, Peeta & Co…
…will not be disappointed!
“Everything that’s in the book is in the movie,” Banks, 37, told E! News today at the American Heart Association’s Red Dash Event in New York City. (The actress works closely with the organization to promote women’s health, and even directed and starred in the hilarious yet informative video “Just a Little Heart Attack.”)
“We didn’t take any liberties,” she added. “It’s a very faithful adaptation.”
As for what fans might not be expecting? “I think you’re going to be surprised how moving it is,” she said with a smile. “It’s extremely moving.”
Can’t wait to see you at the Capitol!
I have loved Elizabeth Banks since 2001′s Wet Hot American Summer. Although, at that point, she was just the tongue-tastic chick with BBQ sauce all over her face. In addition to putting a name to the messy face, the last 11 years have seen Elizabeth’s star slowly, but steadily, rise — going supporting actress in movies like Spider-Man and Seabiscuit to leading lady in W and Role Models.
March will bring her biggest role yet when The Hunger Games is unleashed upon the world and her seemingly perfect realization of Effie Trinket is put on screen for all the world to see.
I recently caught up with Elizabeth, who was promoting her partnership with The American Heart Association, to talk all about The Hunger Games, Effie’s heath-endangering wardrobe and her favorite role of all time!
Insider.com: Were you prepared for the level of fandom The Hunger Games attracts?
Elizabeth Banks: Going in, I really wasn’t. Obviously, I am now [laughs]. It’s all anybody wants to talk about. I knew the books were great, I knew the characters were great and I knew Katniss was an amazing heroine, so I knew we had the goods and now it’s just a matter of whether people come see it. And I think they will – this is a really great movie. It’ll be wild to see people’s reactions to something as beloved as Suzanne’s books.
Insider: The Effie costumes look amazing and you’ve spoken about the difficulty of navigating in them. Did you run for sweatpants at the end of every day?
Elizabeth: [laughs] Absolutely! Although it wasn’t actually sweatpants because it was 105 degrees on set almost every day. It was so hot, I actually got heat exhaustion when we shot The Reaping – which I’d never experienced before. It was pretty crazy. It was more like, “How little clothing can I put on?” It was all about slip dresses.
Insider: Do you have a favorite Effie ensemble?
Elizabeth: My favorite Effie ensemble is the green hair outfit – I just love the puffy sleeves. We really played with proportions. It’s all these tiny, tiny, tiny waists and then something big elsewhere – sometimes it’s the sleeves or the hips, the shoulders, the collar or the bustle. I love that green outfit, it’s the best.
Insider: The one thing I was very taken with in the trailer is the voice you use as Effie. How did you come up with that?
Elizabeth: That was actually one of my greater challenges when it came to playing this role. It’s something I stressed about for the most amount of time – I knew the clothes would be amazing, I saw the wigs and we played with the makeup for two really long days. So I knew the look would be taken care of because of the amazing collaborators we had on the film. But the voice was on me – it was all about what I came up with. It was definitely a lot of pressure. I mean, the book talks about Effie’s Capitol accent almost right away. I wanted something that was unique and theatrical, but not too British or too Southern – it was a really fine balance we had to find.
Insider: And how did you land on the right voice?
Elizabeth: I looked to a lot of different places for inspiration and settled on Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame. She’s one of my all-time favorite actors and one of my all-time favorite characters. If anyone is theatrical and amazing and lives that life, I imagine them to be very much like Effie. I saw her as the aunt that sits at the dinner table and says the most outrageous things.
Insider: I always love asking actors which character they’d love to revisit in order to play the next chapter in their life story.
Elizabeth: I’d love to see where Laura Bush actually goes [laughs] – she’d be interesting. But my favorite character of all time was Miri from Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I’d love to know if she ever left Pittsburgh. I’d like to know what she’s up to at 60. I feel like she writes this amazing book and becomes a sexologist, gets super famous which embarrasses her children, divorces Zack and remarries all these crazy guys. I feel like she’d have an insane life.
Insider: There was lots of buzz around Zack and Miri but it didn’t perform that well at the big box office — how much attention do you pay to the critical and public reception of a film?
Elizabeth: I’m pretty good about leaving it behind. The thing about actors is, we personally have very little control over what ends up no screen. Miri is one piece of a large puzzle that became Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It involved all the other performers and collaborators and the editors and the director – there were definitely scenes about Miri’s backstory that I would have loved to see in the movie that got cut, but you have to give up control as an actor because you have none. It’s an illusion.
The Hunger Games hits theaters on March 23.
Hunger Games star Elizabeth Banks sits down to talk with AMC about the upcoming movie.
She’s the versatile actress you’ve seen in movies such as “W” and “Our Idiot Brother.” Elizabeth Banks is back with her latest project, “Man on a Ledge,” the action thriller in which she plays a police negotiator.
We sat down with her this week to talk about her latest role and her memories of living in San Francisco.
Elizabeth Banks is firing all cylinders right now, and you likely won’t find a more versatile actress on the IMDB. The vivacious blonde actress can ostensibly do it all; from comedy (“Zack and Miri Make a Porno”, “The 40 Year-Old Virgin”), drama (“W”, “Seabiscuit”), thriller (“The Hunger Games”, “The Uninvited”), horror (“Slither”) to adventure (The “Spider-Man” trilogy), she’s got the genres cornered and perfected. At the junket for her new film “Man on a Ledge”, I asked Banks about her aspiration to produce her own films. She spoke a little about “Tink”, announced a little while ago, in which she’ll play Peter Pan’s fairy-dust spreading buddy.
The movie, says Banks, is a little like Will Ferrell’s “Elf”.
It’s a live action Tinkerbell movie sort of in the vein of Elf in which I would play Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell gets thrown out of Never Never Land, and it’s about where she goes and who she meets and the adventures she has….Tinkerbell is one of the greatest characters because she’s mischievous and snarky and fun and sexy and jealous and vengeful
Banks says don’t get too excited just yet….
We’re in script stage and everybody is really excited and blah, blah, doesn’t mean anything. You might as well not even write it down because who knows, it might not even happen.
“Fright Night” scribe Marti Noxon is on scripting duties, with Banks, Adam Shankman (“Hairspray”) and McG (“Charlie’s Angels”) among the film’s producers.
Meanwhile, Banks has another film she’s listed as a producer on, “Pitch Perfect”.
It is a comedy set in the world of competitive cappella singing. It stars a bevy of hilarious, young talent – Rebel Wilson, Adam DeVine, Anna Kendrik, Anna Camp, Britney Snow. It’s really funny.
