Elizabeth Banks
Born: February 10 1975
Where: Pittsfield, Massachusetts, USA
The actress is firmly in the ascendant after starring roles as Berry Brant in the Spider-Man films and the horse-racing drama Seabiscuit.
Subsequent big screen outings have ranged from a smalltown trophy wife in the horror-comedy Slither to a fizzing temptress to Steve Carell in The 40 Year Old Virgin.
The eldest of four children, Banks was raised in rural western Massachusetts, rising to the dizzy heights of Harvest Queen in the local pageant.
(As a young child, she was a contestant on the Nickelodeon game show Finders Keepers).
She graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1992 and is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1998 she completed schooling at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and made he feature debut in the hard-hitting drugs drama Surrender Dorothy.
She then moved to New York and worked in the theatre as well as obtaining TV roles including Sex and the City.
Seeking more screen work, Banks moved to Los Angeles and landed a supporting role in the Samuel L Jackson remake of Shaft (she was forced to change her name to avoid confusion with another actress named Elizabeth Mitchell).
In 2001, she starred in the cult teen comedy Wet Hot American Summer alongside Frasier's David Hyde Pierce.
Her first signal success came the following year with an attention-grabbing albeit brief performance as Betty Brant, secretary of the cantankerous newspaper editor, in Spider-Man.
A rare error of judgement saw her appearing in the Guy Ritchie-directed straight-to-video Madonna vehicle Swept Away the same year.
However, she also snagged the role of a bank teller who teaches Leonardo DiCaprio how to steal in Steven Spielberg's caper movie Catch Me If You Can.
More recognition came with Seabiscuit in which Banks charmed audiences opposite Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire playing the wife of racehorse owner Charles Howard.
She went on to reprise the role of Miss Brant in the excellent Spider-Man II and also starred in the independent movies Heights, Sexual Life and The Baxter.
In 2005, she played bookstore sexual predator Beth in The 40 Year Old Virgin and Starla Grant in James Gunn's entertaining horror-comedy Slither.
The following year she starred opposite Mark Wahlberg in the sports biopic The Invincible and was back in the secretary's chair for Spider-Man 3.
On the small screen she had a recurring role of Dr Kim Briggs in Scrubs while enjoying a brief appearance in Fred Claus and starring with Ryan Reynolds in the superior rom-com Definitely Maybe.
Recent work includes the Eddie Murphy comedy Meet Dave.
