“I’m a f**king actress": Elizabeth Banks on life, love and being informed
Photography James White
Elizabeth Banks definitely lets the F-bomb fly more than most actresses would, during our interview at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont.
This is not a complaint, by the way. In fact, her potty mouth is pretty awesome. Equally refreshing: how frank Banks is. She’ll tell you exactly what she thinks unless she doesn’t want to discuss something.
Then she’ll let you know straight up instead of offering a canned answer. Then there’s her sense of humour – no surprise considering she held her own alongside hilarious co-stars in everything from 30 Rock and Modern Family. Her schedule, however, is no joke. The 39-year-old is the mother of two boys (both under three), runs a production company with her husband, Max Handelman, and is once again playing Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, out now.
She shows up to lunch fresh from one meeting and heads straight to another afterwards. So how does she deal with this crazy-hectic life? She wasn’t shy about sharing – with a few expletives along the way.
1. Small accomplishments
Like most women, Banks has a to-do list that feels never-ending. So she focuses on things she can accomplish in the short term. “Sometimes I just think, ‘I can make this dinner, eat it and clean it up, and I accomplished something. I nurtured my family and myself.’ I like doing Mum shit.”
2. Accepting her age… mostly
“I’m a fan of photoshopping. But I always worry [photos are] going to be [retouched] too much. I don’t need to look like I’m 20. I can look like I’ve lived life a little.”
3. France
As a kid, holidays were car trips to visit family. “If they lived in Cleveland, that’s where we went. Today, her top holiday spot is France. “I love the south of France, I also love Paris; my husband took me there for my 25th birthday.”
4. Unplugging
“Everyone I know feels as if they’re working all the time. The boundaries are blurred. We have phones that send email 24-7. But I don’t check email after 9pm.”
5. Her Trainer
“She runs a gym called AlphaVenice, and she is fantastic,” Banks says of trainer Joselynne Boschen. “[My husband and] I have been working out with her for about five years now.” These days, “He’s more dedicated than I am,” Banks says with a laugh, then deadpans, “but he needs it more than I do. Just genetically.”
6. Respect
Banks and her husband have been together since she was 18. Their secret? Kindness. “One predictor for divorce is contempt, which to me is just another word for disrespect. Everybody finds out something mysterious or secret about their partner that embarrasses or is hurtful to them. And if you bring that up during a fight, you are fucked. Because you clearly don’t respect your partner enough to leave those things alone.”
Photography James White
7. Secret Staycations
“Before we had our first son, we told everyone we knew we were going away, but we didn’t go anywhere. It was awesome. We just enjoyed our house.”
8. Her crockpot
“You can throw anything in there.” One example: chicken with lemon, bay leaf and garlic. “When it comes out the chicken falls off the bone. Delicious.”
9. This Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quote
“Women will have achieved true quality when men share the responsibility
of bringing up the next generation.” Why it resonates with Banks? Like a lot of women, she juggles a busy career and family, and she thinks it’s extremely important for both men and women to reconsider the way families are raised and how society supports people who are bringing up kids.
10. Twitter
@ElizabethBanks has more than 1.3 million Twitter followers. That’s due in large part to the fact that, instead of simply tweeting about every single thing that happens to her, she sends out news stories or funny links, or she asks fans what they think about various topics. Who does she like to follow?
11. Daring fitness activities
By the time Banks became a mum (via surrogate), she was in her late 30s, but she’s determined to keep up with her kids for years to come. “I have two boys; they’re going to be physical. If I want to go skiing with them when they’re teenagers, I have to stay fit.”
She recently went on holiday with her extended family and had the opportunity to go tubing behind a speedboat on a lake. “I was like, ‘I’m way too old to be doing this! But I thought, I don’t want my kids thinking their mother wouldn’t get out on a tube.” How did it go? “Well, I nearly died. I did a full cartwheel in the air as I went into the water. But it was totally fun and worth it.”
12. Being informed
“I’m a fucking actress. I’m not going to come up with the next heart transplant or a solar-energy battery. But I know those are important things, so I like to encourage young people – who right now want to be on reality shows – to educate themselves. I’m just someone who encourages people to be interested citizens of the world.”
