Early Life and Education
Banks was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the eldest of four children of Ann (née Wallace) and Mark P. Mitchell. Her father was a factory worker for General Electric and her mother worked in a bank.
Growing up, she played baseball and rode horses. She was in little league when she broke her leg sliding into third. She then tried out for the school play which was her start in acting. She graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1992, and was a member of the Massachusetts Junior Classical League. She attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta Sorority. Banks graduated magna cum laude in 1996. In 1998, she completed schooling at the American Conservatory Theater and earned an MFA.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Banks
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didnt, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it ... its just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.”
—Henrik Ibsen (18281906)
“In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.”
—Victor Hugo (18021885)