Elizabeth Banks
- Birthday
- Feb 10, 1974
- Birthplace
- Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Bio: Actress Elizabeth Banks was born Elizabeth Mitchell in Pittsfield, a small city in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts near the New York border, on February 10, 1974. She describes herself as having been seen as a "goody two-shoes" in her youth who was nominated to be the local Harvest Queen.
Banks left home to attend college at the University of… More
Bio: Actress Elizabeth Banks was born Elizabeth Mitchell in Pittsfield, a small city in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts near the New York border, on February 10, 1974. She describes herself as having been seen as a "goody two-shoes" in her youth who was nominated to be the local Harvest Queen.
Banks left home to attend college at the University of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated Magna cum Laude, and went on to attend the Advanced Training Program at the prestigious American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, from which she graduated in 1998. She then moved to New York and worked in the theater as well as obtaining her first roles on-screen, small parts in movies and guest-star roles on television series. Seeking more screen work, Banks moved to Los Angeles and the supporting roles soon came, and required that she change her name to avoid confusion with another actress named Elizabeth Mitchell who had already established herself. Her first signal success came in her delightful, brief performance in Spider-Man (2002), for which she is best known despite subsequent leading roles, as Betty Brant, the secretary of the cantankerous newspaper tycoon. (Banks has reprised the role in the Spider-Man series.)
Banks followed up her performance in Spider-Man with small roles in other movies released that year, Swept Away (2002) and Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), in which she plays a bank clerk who assists the young Frank Abagnale with vital information about bank checking policies. More recognition came with Seabiscuit (2003), in which Banks charmed audiences playing the wife of Seabiscuit's owner Charles Howard, and Banks was able to broker these successes into leading roles, in Michael Showalter's The Baxter (2005) and James Gunn's Slither (2006).
The winsome, beautiful Banks projects an exceptionally-charming screen presence that has drawn comparisons to Audrey Hepburn. Though her off-screen vocabulary is at times sprinkled with Valley-speak, her performances demonstrate solid acting skill and a keen intelligence. Banks and her boyfriend since college days, Max Handelman, married in 2003.
Most Popular
Filmography
-
The Lego Movie (2014)
- Actor
-
Walk Of Shame (2014)
- Actor
-
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
- Effie Trinket
-
Movie 43 (2013)
- Amy, Director
- 4%
-
Frank or Francis (2013)
- Actor
- See all 44 films
Elizabeth Banks Videos
The 40 Year Old Virgin
2 minutes 27 seconds
Slither
1 minutes 23 seconds
Meet Bill
2 minutes 26 seconds
Spider-man 3
3 minutes 5 seconds
The Baxter
2 minutes 22 seconds
Born Today
- Drew Fuller (33 years old)
- Nancy Kwan (74 years old)
- Jason Gray-Stanford (43 years old)
- Michele Placido (67 years old)
- James Fox (74 years old)
- Rebecca Hall (31 years old)
- Peter Mayhew (69 years old)
- Sanoe Lake (34 years old)
- Nora Ephron (72 years old)
- Grace Jones (65 years old)
- Lily Cole (25 years old)
- Geraldine Somerville (46 years old)
- Alison Elliott (43 years old)
- Natalia Oreiro (36 years old)
- Kelly Sheridan (36 years old)
- Kevin Garnett (37 years old)
- Masanobu Ando (38 years old)
- Tania Mallet (72 years old)
- Jayne Wisener (26 years old)
- Claudia Karvan (41 years old)
- Sean Whalen (49 years old)
- Maile Flanagan (48 years old)
- Ryunosuke Kamiki (20 years old)
- Victoria Wood (60 years old)
- See more (24)
