HollywoodReporter.com

“The most surprising part of motherhood for me is just my capacity for joy,” says the 37-year-old actress, who’s mom to 10-month-old son Felix with husband Max Handelman. “I did not know how much joy a kid could bring into your life. It’s incredible.”

Of course, motherhood does have its challenges — especially when it comes to the precarious juggling act of also managing a career. “It’s difficult to balance,” Banks (who’ll soon hit theaters on March 23 in the eagerly anticipated The Hunger Games) tells iVillage exclusively. “I think any working parent has a hard time being away from their child, whether it be a mom or a dad.”

Watch our exclusive video to find out how Banks is seeing herself in her son and how she and husband keep their romance alive.

iVillage.com

Elizabeth Banks eked out some rare down time from shooting scenes from her latest movie, Man on a Ledge.

Of course, this came as she and co-star Sam Worthington were sitting on a 14-inch ledge, 250 feet above the ground atop New York’s Roosevelt Hotel, waiting for cameras to roll.

“The ledge was a few inches bigger than the size of a man’s shoe,” says Banks. “And then it was a straight sheer drop to the street, down 22 floors. You don’t want to pull your BlackBerry out there. I focused on Sam and we hung out.”

“It was just us and the pigeons,” Worthington concurs. “When you’re up there you do get to enjoy the view.”

It was a rare moment of inactivity during one of the most jam-packed schedules in the business. Banks has three major films coming out in the next five months, starting with the crime thriller Man on a Ledge (out Friday) and the hugely anticipated adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games (March 23). She’s also part of the all-star cast in the pregnancy comedy What to Expect When You’re Expecting (May 11).

Adding to the intensity, Banks and husband Max Handelman are parents to seven-month-old son Felix and are also co-producing the comedy Pitch Perfect, about a singing competition.

“It’s a really exciting year and it’s essentially planned through August,” says Banks, 37. “I just have to go one foot through the other day by day and get through it.”

The first step is Ledge, in which Banks, in her first leading action role, plays a police negotiator trying to talk down a potential jumper.

The high emotions during the scene that has Banks joining Worthington on the ledge are authentic simply because the ledge itself was real.

“You can feel Elizabeth’s fear when she’s stepping out there,” says producer Lorenzo di Bonaventua. “If you were on a set, you’re not going to have that. There’s a purity to that fear that you cannot escape.”

Real-life daredevil

Such treacherous moments were hardly deterrents for Banks, who swings on trapezes for a hobby and admits to being a roller coaster fanatic.

“My take on it is, life is worth living,” she says. “It’s much more dangerous getting in my car in Los Angeles than doing these stunts. However, there was a 2% chance of death the entire time.”

Banks had a harness even for scenes shot inside the hotel room with an open window looking out to the ledge. And when the action moved outside, the security system was even more elaborate to keep the stars from danger. Still, as Banks says, errors happen.

“I’m not afraid of heights, I’m afraid of human failure,” she says. “That scares me. I was constantly checking that everything was working.”

“But,” she adds, “it was a pretty great rush.”

Banks has had to get used to a fast-paced acting schedule since breaking out in 2008, playing Laura Bush in Oliver Stone’s W as well as alongside Seth Rogen in Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Her widespread appeal has only increased with juicy characters such as 30 Rock’s brash political commentator Avery Jessup — the Emmy-nominated role she has played during four seasons.

But her past workload hasn’t required the current level of power days until now. During an interview at a sparse editing studio, Banks adroitly juggles planning for an upcoming trip to New York and Europe with her family to promote Ledge (“I need to find the right hotel for my son,” she says), an interview, and overseeing the editing of a webisode promoting Pitch Perfect.

“As producer, it’s so important to shape the movie’s message,” she says. “Marketing is so important.”

She’s focused but isn’t immune to laughing at the ad-libbed performances by the actors on screen. The webisodes are due the next week, though, “so there’s a little pressure,” she adds with a tight smile.

The March release of The Hunger Games is more kindling on her career and hectic schedule with Banks playing the pivotal role of Effie Trinket.

A villain to remember

In both the film adaptation and the best-selling book series, fan favorite Trinket is a wildly dressed representative from an authoritarian regime based in a futuristic center called the Capitol. Banks wanted to make sure her outrageous character had some depth.

“She’s a great villain,” says Banks. “But I wanted to make sure people didn’t dismiss her as comic relief. I wanted to make a three-dimensional character.”

Banks reveled in Effie’s outrageous outfits, images of which have been released in advance of the March release. They were so intricate, right down to the flamboyant fake nails, that she couldn’t do anything on her own on set without assistance — something that further helped her transformation into the character.

“People had to do everything from dress me and take me to the bathroom and unzip. I literally couldn’t even go to the bathroom,” she says. “But that’s totally Effie Trinket.”

In her mind, the clothes represent the everyday strain of Capitol life. “She lives in an oppressive society, so everything she wears is tight and constricting,” Banks says. “The shoes are torturous.”

Though her casting has been accepted by the protective fans of the book series, there will always be detractors. (“There are some haters,” admits Banks. “But you can’t please everyone.”) The mania around the movie is poised to propel Banks into another stratum of recognizability.

“We’ll see,” Banks says. “(The hype) is all online right now and all sort of fake. We won’t know until people actually see it. But I’m also totally unrecognizable in this film.”

She is on full display in What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which boasts an A-list cast including Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Brooklyn Decker and Chris Rock.

Banks plays a know-it-all pregnancy author who finds out the real thing is far harder than theory as she transforms during the pregnancy. For Banks, the physical manifestation of that was a prosthetic stomach and a comically bulky bra.

“The stomach wasn’t that bad, it was the boobs,” Banks says with a laugh. “It’s Pamela Anderson times 10. They just weighed so much and totally outpaced the stomach.”

Her hormonal scenes, however, set the stage for high comedy.

“It allowed me to be a little show-offy,” says Banks. “I feel I have frankly the funniest role in the movie.”

Open-ended story line

It’s the kind of out-there comedy fans have come to expect of Banks, whose anything-goes attitude gained a weekly mainstream audience thanks to her hilarious run as Jessup on 30 Rock. At the end of last season, Jessup was being held in North Korea as a slave-bride to leader Kim Jong Il’s son. Now that the dictator has died in real life, Jessup is game to close the fictional loop.

“I know the writers want to address all of this, but I don’t know how or when,” she says. “No one has contacted me about specifics.”

Banks has enough on her plate right now and will soon start looking ahead to new projects, including playing Tinker Bell in the live-action romantic-comedy film Tink. There will always be more flamboyant portrayals, as well.

As the Pitch Perfect editing session resumes, Banks looks up at the screen and sees herself in a webisode as an absurdly loud talk show host called Gail Abernathy.

“You might have noticed,” she says with a smile. “I do love my outrageous characters.”

USAToday.com

In an attempt to preserve the anticipation and mystery that fans are relishing, the trailer only shows footage from the first half of the film, chronicling events leading up to but not including the Games themselves. After giving fans their first look at all of the book’s beloved characters brought to life, giving viewers who haven’t read the book vital information about the world of Panem, the trailer ends with an electrifying cliffhanger right as Katniss enters the arena.