Interview: Elizabeth Banks
She’s Got Balls

Swear like a trucker? No problem. Have sex with Seth Rogen? Bring it on. Elizabeth Banks proves she’s got bigger cojones than your average starlet with her role in the potty-mouthed Kevin Smith flick Zack and Miri Make a Porno

In the span of three short weeks — 21 days — you can catch Elizabeth Banks in three movies. And those three — W., Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Role Models — join her other 2008 releases, Meet Dave and Definitely, Maybe, bringing her total to five films in a single year.

Suddenly, the 34-year-old actor has become a female Jude Law.

“Oh God, don’t say that,” shouts Banks when reminded of Law’s much maligned 2004, the year in which he released six films. “There was a curse on him. How dare you! Take it back,” she says laughing.

“Maybe I hang out with a lot of dirt bags, but that’s how everyone I know talks. So the script wasn’t shocking to me when I read it, and certainly after seeing Kevin’s movies, that’s what you expect from him. He has a really distinct American voice and he captures how a certain generation of Americans speak in their daily lives, and that’s why I think he’s so popular.”

And the movie doesn’t shy away from showing naked naughty bits and including simulated sex scenes either, although for the very tender encounter between Rogen and Banks the two stars remained fully clothed.

“It’s a beautiful scene,” she says. “I really think Miri falls in love, and her heart just bursts open in that moment. And it begins with that horrible porn dialogue, and that was sort of our foreplay, and we really got to play around with it. I mean, Seth and I were giggling and laughing, and it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re really doing this.’

“It’s always uncomfortable to shoot those scenes, but Seth and I have great chemistry, he’s a really good kisser, and he’s totally adorable, and I have no problem loving him.”

Banks and Rogen first starred together in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and it was apparent to her then that Rogen possessed a certain undeniable charm that audiences couldn’t resist.

“They throw this word around, ‘Everyman,’ all the time, but he really is representative of, I think, men’s insecurities. They are all wrapped up in him. Seth is someone who is not afraid to let those hang out in his movie roles. And also his appeal lies in that he gets laid in his movies and he can still be totally insecure and hang out with his friends. I mean, the problem for me with those movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up, is that they are no longer ‘romantic comedies,’ they are ‘bromantic comedies.’

“It’s a big problem for women because we have nothing to do in those movies. It’s not about a male-female relationship, and his appeal, I think, comes in the scenes when he is hanging out with his buddies and his true nature is revealed, that he loves comic books or internet porn, everything Seth actually does love in his real life [laughing].”

Off-screen Banks is married to her college sweetheart, producer Max Handelman, whom she met on her very first day attending the University of Pennsylvania. Although Banks had acted as a teenager in high school productions in her small hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, by the time she was in college studying for a B.A. she felt certain her acting days were behind her.

“I never thought I was going be an actor when I was in school, not once,” she remembers. “All I knew was I didn’t want to be poor. And what I knew about actors was that they were starving artists and I was a starving student at the time, and I was done with it — I did not want to starve. My friends who were actors were applying to drama school when I was graduating college, and I thought, well, okay, I’ll do that and it will be a sign — if I get in then I’m supposed to go this route, and if I don’t get in then the door gets slammed in my face and it’s over. And I got in, and I’ve never looked back.”

Banks refers to herself as a “character actress trapped in a leading lady’s body,” which explains why she was thrilled to take on Zack and Miri and finally strip away the lingering “girl-next-door” label that hangs loosely beside her name.

“I’m excited for people to see the different things I can do,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons why I could not pass up working with Kevin Smith, because I think Kevin, in comedy circles, writes women better than most. They are never relegated to just being ‘the girl’ in the movie, they always have genuine character arcs, there’s always a problem for them to solve and I talk just as dirty as Seth does!

“I’ve played ‘the girl’ many times and it’s very hard to find movies where you are not ‘the girl’ that actually pay you any money, so I felt this movie was something I couldn’t pass up.”

Ingrid Randoja is the deputy editor of Famous.