Elizabeth Banks is an American actress, producer, and director. Banks changed her name to avoid confusion with actress Elizabeth Mitchell. She has appeared as ‘Effie Trinket’ in the international hit “The Hunger Games, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” “Man on a Ledge” opposite Sam Worthington and “People Like Us” opposite Chris Pine and Michelle Pfeiffer.
In 1998, Banks made her feature debut in the controversial addiction drama Surrender Dorothy, with subsequent small-screen roles in Third Watch and Sex and the City only serving to contribute to her rapidly growing profile in film and television.
Banks was born Elizabeth Irene Mitchell in Pittsfield, a small city in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts near the New York border, on February 10, 1974. She grew up on Brown Street, the eldest of four children of Ann Mitchell (née Wallace) and Mark P. Mitchell. Her father was a factory worker for General Electric and her mother worked in a bank.
Banks married Max Handelman, a sports writer and producer, in 2003. They have two sons, Felix, who was born in March 2011, and Magnus, born in Nov. 2012, both by gestational surrogacy.