Elizabeth Banks reflects on lack of leading roles in career

Elizabeth Banks has played many different roles in her lengthy career, but few leading lady roles, as the actress said herself.

As opposed to her usual roles of comedic relief, Banks plays a surgeon in her new movie A Mistake. Her character gets caught up in a scandal after a patient of hers dies.

"It's really only been in my second life as an actress here that I've started playing the lead role," Banks, 53, told People.

"It's because I was a great ingenue for a long time. I played the lady in many movies to some great leading men," she continued. "And then I had smaller roles in huge movies like The Hunger Games and Pitch Perfect, but never quite that DC or Marvel movie lead."

"I'm often given more comic relief parts," she noted. "So to have this offer felt like, wow, I'm going to be in every scene of this film, playing a character that's very good at their job, it's all very serious."

Reflecting on what the movie taught her, she said: "I'm somebody who puts a lot of faith in doctors, and this was a reminder of how human doctors are. They have bad days and off days, and days of learning, and days where their confidence is low. So I just felt like that was a fascinating idea, just that this could and does happen."

Elizabeth Banks’ new film A Mistake is now in theaters.