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.”

AccessHollywood.com

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…”

People.com

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!

EOnline.com

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.

TheInsider.com

She has launched her official website, ElizabethBanks.com and is updating there frequently with blogs and such.

Also, Capitol Couture has launched. The website is the official site to find the latest fashion trends and information in regards to the upcoming film “The Hunger Games”.

We sat down with her this week to talk about her latest role and her memories of living in San Francisco.

7LiveOnline.com

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.

MovieHole.net

On T.V. she’s been a regular on comedies including “Scrubs” and “30 Rock.”

106.7 FM ‘The Fan’ movie reviewer Kevin McCarthy learned that even when she’s playing a serious role, as she does in the new movie “Man on a Ledge,” she likes to sneak in a little humor when she can.

This trifle of an action film does have some mojo going for it. It’s played a bit tongue-in-cheek, with the wry Banks filling the role as the hard-drinking New York Police suicide negotiator. The tension in this film is wholly exaggerated, to a point where it teeters on the brink of parody. All the ensemble cast has their game faces on, however, as the somewhat overly complex plot unravels.

Sam Worthington is Nick Cassidy, introduced as a cop-turned-thief doing hard time at Sing-Sing. His brother Joey (Jamie Bell) is embarrassed that Nick has sullied the family name, but does manage to get Nick a temporary furlong from the joint to attend his father’s funeral. Also attending are is the convict’s old police partner Mike Ackerman (Anthony Mackie) and Joey’s girlfriend, Angie (Génesis Rodríguez). Nick is able to distract his handlers enough to make a spectacular escape from the graveyard. The manhunt to retrieve him is on, led by his ex-partner.

The next time Nick makes an appearance is on the ledge of the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The chaos surrounding the event is almost instantaneous, as onlookers encourage Nick to jump, even as he insists he will talk only to police suicide negotiator Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks). The show on the ledge is a deception, however. Nick is out to clear his name and get revenge on David Englander (Ed Harris), the rich dude who sent him up the river. While Nick distracts the New York City police department, the brother/girlfriend combination of Joey and Angie are breaking into Englander’s supposedly impenetrable safe deep in the building next door.

Besides being the most elaborate scheme ever to clear a name – why doesn’t Nick just hire a good lawyer – the “Man on the Ledge” goes to great lengths to keep up the suspense on both the ledge and the break-in. Nick’s desire to have Bank’s character as his talking partner becomes all part of what is going on in the building next door, within the plan’s utter complexity. And it’s a good thing that girlfriend Angie obviously works out, because otherwise she’d never get into the skintight cat suit that allows her to crawl through duct work.

That’s what happening in this film, two simultaneous stories, each feeding less and less off each other. Worthington is game for this type of role, he does a decent job of trying to hold it all together, it just is so absurd once it’s figured out, that if I were part of the planning committee, I would have just paid off some dirty cops to burn some records. Elizabeth Banks is her usual I’m-in-on-the-joke self, showing off the “million dollar a picture” smile and slightly winking to the camera as the suicide negotiator.

There is an element of the 99 versus the one percent as represented by the rich man played by Ed Harris, but again he’s so mean and spiteful there is not one person in the or outside the film that wants him to succeed (maybe his administrative staff). He would have been better off not harassing Nick and writing off whatever he supposedly stole as part of some off-shore money laundering. This is a set-up that truly could have spared the time, effort and emergency vehicles involved just with a little outside-the-box tax and legal maneuverings.

In as much, though, as the audacious plan seemed unnecessary, it did provide an exaggeration that at times was entertaining. At least it had the cat-suited Angie slinking around, because pink underwear is best when breaking and entering. That spanking of convention, as well as Bank’s presence and the oiliness of Ed Harris, was enough of a diversion to keep the story rolling along. It’s funny that in cinematic fiction the good guy is the one that generally wins, while the opposite is true in real life, at least when money is involved.

“Man on the Ledge” is what movies are for, a 102 minute diversion rooting for a guy who was wrongly accused, who still had the wherewithal to get the right plan together at the right time, all while entertaining New York City and the audience in the dark on a 14-inch stage.

HollywoodChicago.com

This week, in the thriller “Man on a Ledge,” Banks plays a police negotiator named Lydia Mercer. When a disgraced ex-cop Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) climbs up on a New York hotel threatening to jump, Mercer is tasked with talking him down. What she doesn’t know is that the stunt is merely a smokescreen to hide his true plan. Certain shady characters discover his motives, so they set attempt to stop Nick, causing chaos to ensue.

Recently I had the chance to sit down for a roundtable interview with Banks about the movie. Below are some highlights of the conversation.

Q: One of the cool things about your character in this movie is that she’s a “police officer” and not a “police woman.” There’s not anything mentioned about her being a woman in the movie. Was that important to you to just play a character where it didn’t matter?

Elizabeth Banks: I really, I was very drawn, (pauses) thank you for noticing, I was drawn to the fact that she was nobody’s wife or girlfriend. I also felt the same way. I felt that gender really didn’t matter. It definitely goosed it a little that she’s a woman, but it could have easily been a man. It felt to me like a younger John McClane. That definitely drew me to it.

And the other thing is that I met with some actual NYPD negotiators and I asked specifically to meet a woman. And I said, ‘They have women right?’ And they were like ‘Oh yeah we’ve got a few.’ I met this great lady from Staten Island via Ireland, so as you can imagine her accent was incredible. She was very girly and she was like 42, a mom, wore a cute Banana Republic suit, and carried a cute purse that had her piece in it.

Q: That’s what makes it fun for you to go toe-to-toe with Ed Burns. It’s just cop-on-cop and it’s not anything else.

EB: Yeah, exactly. And we were really intent on presenting that camaraderie. It’s a very serious job the negotiator I met has. She has talked most people down actually. She has a very good track record, as they mostly do. In all honesty, their whole motto is ‘Jumpers jump.’ In other words, if you want to off yourself, you go to the top of the building and you jump off.

If you’re still standing there by the time I pull my pants on and get in the taxi, go uptown, get a coffee and start talking to you, your rational mind has hopefully taken over and you may want to get saved. But the problem is, if you then go over, it’s really on them ‘cause then they really take it as their fault, because they couldn’t figure out a way to get you in.

Q: Did you actually go out on the ledge?

EB: I did…We were 220 feet, 22 stories above Madison Avenue, straight down, nothing, 14 inches of ledge. And one string, two string size wire holding us there in a harness.

Q: So you don’t have vertigo then?

EB: Everyone has a little bit of vertigo. Vertigo is like your body’s notion that you should get to your center of gravity as fast as possible. In your body that means let me hurl you off this building to get you to the ground really fast…But I don’t particularly have a fear of heights, I’m a bit of a thrill seeker actually, so I thought it was going to be really fun, and it was. And that’s the view (pointing to the poster). That’s what it looked like right there.

So we went out there on the wires, I’m not afraid of heights particularly, but you still get that pit in your stomach and your adrenaline going crazy, and your heart’s racing, and you have sweaty palms because your instinctual reaction in a place of danger is fight or flight. Your engine just starts running. So every 45 minutes the stunt guys would be like ‘You know, let’s come in, let’s take a few minutes,’ and at the end of a long day, I was only really out, I was in the window mostly. I was only out, out for a total, like the hours of it, like a day and a half really.

Q: In a way that does add to your performance because it’s not like faking it with green screen.

EB: That’s right it’s like total gift for an actor. You don’t have to figure out ‘What would it feel like if that happened?’ You’re out there. It’s clear on your face exactly what’s happening you know?

Q: You have a nice balance between funny roles and serious ones. You’ve done a lot of great comedy stuff but you’ve also done stuff like this film and ‘The Next Three Days.’

EB: I think that you are best remembered by your last piece (Laughing). Because you know, I started out in comedy; I did a total cult comedy called ‘Wet Hot American Summer.’ Then I did ‘Seabiscuit’ was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and ‘Seabiscuit’ was like I could not get arrested to do comedy. Literally it took being in ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ and by the way they were gonna give that role to Amy Adams; she almost stole it from me. But literally it was like a last minute, my agents begging them to see me. Then it sort of took that to reset how, and oh yeah, I was sort of in ‘Scrubs’ on the side. So my point being, some people only know my dramatic work. And some people only know that I’m on ‘30 Rock.’

Q: Do you have a preference for comedy over drama?

EB: I do, I prefer comedy. But I like great roles, I’m always just looking for a great role. Unfortunately in comedy, in all honesty, it’s mostly wives and girlfriends. Believe me, you’ve all seen several comedies that I could have been in, but I was like ‘Eh, I’ve done this. I’m not that interested in repeating myself over and over again.’ So I would love to do more comedy. Making people laugh is very addicting. It’s much harder. This drama stuff isn’t that difficult. I mean it’s difficult. I mean this movie, you can tell it’s a lot of great editing. (Laughing)

‘The Next Three Days’ was hard, it was very physically exhausting. I was in jail, and I spent most of my days separated from the cast and crew like sitting in a corner crying. It’s not that fun to make those. You really have to go there, and I love to really go there. If I’m going to do it, I try to do it 110 percent. The comedy, you’ve got to have a real instinct for it. You need timing and it requires a certain skill set. You can absolutely fix jokes in edit. You absolutely can, but you know whether someone is a funny person or not.

Q: You’ve worked with a lot of people like Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Ed Burns, is there someone that you’d love to work with that you haven’t had the opportunity to?

EB: I would love to work with Woody Allen. I’ve almost worked with him twice. He’s chosen other people.

Q: But you’ve gotten in the door.

EB: I’ve met him a few times, yeah. It’s a very fun meeting, mostly because the expectation is that he’s gonna like…literally someone was like, a friend of mine who had met him on a meeting, because he doesn’t audition anyone. You just go, and he just goes ‘Mmm…yes/no.’ A friend of mine met him and said the room he sat in was very dark. It’s the same place on the Upper East Side where he’s been living for a hundred years. And all the rooms were dark, and it was like a hand came out of a shadow and went ‘It was nice to meet you,’ and that was it.

So the first time I met him he actually came out and was like ‘Hi! It’s me!’ like in the full light. I still was like in a weird spotlight in the middle of the room, but he actually came out and shook my hand and spoke to me. And I was like ‘All right! I’m in! He came out of the shadows.’ I didn’t get it but he did come out of the shadows to talk to me.

Q: How do you feel about your career right now?

EB: It’s gone really well in the past. Will it go well in the future? We’ll see. Works for today.

Starpulse.com

Banks joins a roll call that includes Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, Steve Carell, Catherine Keener and Kevin Kline in a story that follows a battle of wills between Frank, an intellectual film director (Carell) and Francis, an online blogger (Black) who still lives with his parents and who delights in attacking the other man’s films.

Cage plays an actor who is famous for his high-concept films, while Kline will play the director of the world’s top-grossing movie as well as that character’s brother, who turns into an animatronic head. (Yes, it’s a Charlie Kaufman film.)

Banks will play a highly-regarded actress making formulaic comedy bombs who is having an affair with Carell’s Frank.

Anthony Bregman of A Likely Story is producing.

Banks, repped by UTA, Untitled Entertainment and Ziffren Brittenham, will also appear in Lionsgate’s Hunger Games, which opens March 23.

HollywoodReporter.com

“I adore him,” she told The Hollywood Reporter of her co-star, whose film opens nationwide on Friday, Jan. 27.

The duo play a pair of NYPD officers who are forced to work together to talk Sam Worthington’s character down from the ledge. The film is directed by Asger Leth and required Banks to film many of her scenes from the top of a high rise in New York City.

“I’m not afraid of heights, I’m afraid of human error,” she told THR. “I’m afraid of like, did they actually put the harness on right and is my coat gonna get stuck in a window… is my boot gonna fall off. Anything can happen, and those are the things that scare me. Not the actual height.”

While Burns had his preparation in the bag with a family full of NYPD officers, Banks took the opportunity to meet with a female negotiator from Staten Island who taught her that, “the women on the force are constantly proving themselves over and over.”

“When they hear I’m playing a cop, of course they’re gonna break my balls about it,” Burns said of his father and three cousins who currently serve on the force. “But at the same time everybody gets a thrill out of seeing a family member in a big movie, that’s always pretty great. And then when I’m playing a cop, I’m sure they’ll see things that I didn’t do to the letter, let’s say, and I’ll hear about that.”

Speaking to his scenes with Banks, Burns added: “She and I hit it off immediately.”

HollywoodReporter.com