Elizabeth Banks Covers Allure June 2012

I’d forgotten about Elizabeth Banks, since I guess she wasn’t on my radar at all before The Hunger Games and now that’s old news. But she’s in What To Expect When You’re Expecting too. So here’s the only piece of promo I’ve really seen from her on a promotional trail that’s relied on nulliparous Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez’s relationship with The Choreographer. I’m MEH about Banks and I’m not in love with a shoot where it looks like she’s got Novacane mouth.

On welcoming a son using a surrogate: ‘I had already mourned the loss of my fertility for myself, so I was past it. The only time it really affected me was when Alec Baldwin looked me straight in the eye and asked me, ‘Are you pregnant right now?’ Alec Baldwin asked me straight up. I had made a comment about wearing a fake belly, something innocuous, and he looked me straight in the eye and asked me, ‘Are you pregnant right now?’ And I blanched totally. Because of course, technically, no I wasn’t. But then, technically, yes, in a way I was! And it was very weird. I thought Alec was reading my mind or something. We weren’t telling anyone then, so I said ‘No.’ I thought, ‘Is that a lie?’ Because it wasn’t a lie, and yet it was a lie! It’s essentially a test tube baby, it’s just the test tube is another woman. That you can grow a baby outside of yourself! It’s amazing!’
On What To Expect When You’re Expecting: ‘I did [the movie] for my fellow [women],’ says Banks, who stars alongside Jennifer Lopez, 42, Cameron Diaz, 39, Anna Kendrick, 26, and Brooklyn Decker, 25. ‘I thought I was standing up for all the women who have crazy horrible pregnancies; you know, there’s all these things we’re not allowed to talk about in public.’
On being so, so skinny: ‘It’s not good to put in a magazine what I weigh because it’s too little. People freak out when they hear what I weigh. They think, ‘Oh, you’re too skinny.’ But I ate a cupcake last night, and I eat broccoli. I work out with a trainer; she kicks my a**.’
On her changing body image: ‘I thought I had chicken legs, and I thought, Oh, my boobies are too small,’ she says. ‘It was the era of Cindy Crawford and The Body, and I didn’t have that.’
On being the breadwinner: ‘Well, we’re the first generation to do it. And it’s very ingrained even in our DNA that men are hunter-gatherers who are meant to go off and provide. And that we are really meant to stay at home and have kids…. Let’s be honest. Men love a second income. It gets them their boat and their vacations. They want their wives to work.’
On sexism in Hollywood: ‘When you’re young in this business, you don’t realize it, but there are no superhero movies starring women! I was very idealistic. And so it was an adjustment knowing I was going into a movie and would be working just as hard as the male actors, and in some cases feeling I was more talented than they were, and knowing I was making a fraction of their salary. And knowing also that this is my reality going forward.’