Actress Elizabeth Banks is as versatile as they'll let her be

The possible game-changer for the high-cheekboned, blond beauty who for 10 years has expertly run the woman's-role gamut of wife ("Seabiscuit"), girlfriend ("Invincible"), secretary (the "Spider-Man" films), hot pickup ("The 40-Year-Old Virgin") and also-ran ("Definitely, Maybe," "The Baxter"), is this week's costarring role as Miri, a cash-strapped Pittsburgher who out of desperation agrees to produce an adult film with her similarly broke best friend, Zack, played by Seth Rogen. For Banks, the range was now all in one lead: sexy, funny, hurt, confused and smitten.

"It's why I love Miri," said Banks over lunch recently at the Chateau Marmont. "It's the best role I've ever played. I mean, Kevin actually put a woman's name in the title of the movie!"

Smith returns the praise, calling Banks "hands down the best actress I've ever worked with" and citing a high school reunion sequence in which Miri brazenly, futilely comes on to a long-ago crush (Brandon Routh). "It's heartbreakingly awkward and wonderful, a comedic tour de force," says Smith, who cast her after Rogen lauded her comic skills, letting on that Banks got very far toward the lead role in the "Knocked Up" auditions. "She's got that 'guy's girl' thing going for her, so she can roll with dudes and be funny, but scrape that away and you realize this chick is way better than an R-rated comedy."

Banks responded so strongly to the romantic sweetness in the "Zack and Miri" script that the "Make a Porno" part of the title ultimately sneaked up on her after filming began. "Seth and I joked about that a lot," she says about the stripping and simulating around them. "It was like, where do we put our eyes? Not really sure."

But considering how exquisitely hilarious and carnal she made her anything-goes temptress in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," she is hardly a prude about such matters. "Sex is ridiculous on all levels," says the 34-year-old, who has been with her husband, producer Max Handelman, for 16 years. "As a woman, I don't see it as a big romantic thing. We have needs as human beings. I'm not a self-serious person in general, and I'm not somebody who believes that women have to uphold the code of morality for men."