Elizabeth Banks channeled empathy when getting into the “mindset” to play Hope Goldman in her new film, Skincare.
“This is somebody who, she built this [empire] all by herself,” Banks, 50, exclusively told Us Weekly on Tuesday, August 13, at the New York City screening of the upcoming crime thriller. “She’s poured her entire everything into it. Her heart, her soul, her actual physical life, her money. Everything is about this. It’s almost like she can’t fail because that’s her entire identity. So if she fails, she’s a nobody. She’s a nothing. And I can’t imagine anybody wants to feel that way.”
Based loosely on the real-life true crime story of famed skincare guru Dawn DaLuise, Skincare — which hits theaters on Friday, August 16 — follows Hope as she’s about to take her career to the next level by launching her very own skincare line. However, when a rival boutique opens directly across from her store, she begins to suspect someone is trying to sabotage her, and she embarks on a quest to unravel the mystery of who is trying to destroy her life.
Banks wasn’t aware the film was at all based in reality when taking on the role. Instead, she was focused on figuring out who Hope was as a character: an ambitious entrepreneur who knows she has the talent to back up her confidence in the skincare game.
“I was just really trying to imagine what it would be like if everything I’d worked for was about to be taken away from me,” she told Us. “And how hard I would try to make sure that didn’t happen.”
Banks explained that much of her preparation was about “being tactile,” often giving her loved ones facials to hone her skills. Her family, however, was split about the more method approach. The actress said her husband, Max Handelman, did “not” enjoy receiving the aesthetician treatment, but their 11-year-old son, Felix, was another story. “He still asks me for facials all the time,” she confessed. (Banks and Handelman, who tied the knot in 2003, also share son Magnus, 10.)
“I wanted to be great at giving facials. That was really important to me,” Banks explained of her dive into the skincare world. “This woman has built everything on the notion that she is great at what she does and that has to be true. So we believed in that and I believed in it. And I did a lot of facials and I practiced facials and I loved doing them. I built everything on that.”
Banks’ hard work clearly paid off. Director Austin Peters told Us that the Pitch Perfect star “blew [him] away every single day” on set.
“She is a pro. She’s so unbelievably talented and had a lot of stuff that she would do and personal stories that she told me about her own life that she would tap into and channel Hope’s emotions,” he said, noting that Banks became “really committed” to portraying an authentic aesthetician in addition to taking Hope on an emotional journey.
Peters added that Banks’ ability to dig into her “actor’s bag” with every performance is exactly what makes her such an “unbelievable talent” and powerful onscreen presence.
“She’s so real and so personal and also able to be someone that is totally different from her at the same time,” he explained, sharing that Banks would sometimes “transform” into Hope while on set for “extended periods of time.”
“For one of the scenes where she’s on the phone and she’s really emotional and screaming, I was so nervous to do it more than once because it’s such a draining scene and there’s a problem with the camera,” he recalled of a particularly heavy filming day. “And the first day, she said, ‘Hey, we should do that again. It’s not in focus.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, OK, Elizabeth, can we do one more?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ And just immediately did it again, even at the exact same heightened emotionality. And so for someone like me, a director on their first narrative feature, it’s like you really cannot do any better than getting to work with an actor like that.”
For Peters, it was Banks’ ability to deliver a strong performance — despite the hectic shooting days — that left him most impressed.
“I think mostly I was just blown away by her ability to oscillate with our crazy schedule, from a dramatic scene to a more comedic scene to a scene that started in the beginning of the film and then immediately into a scene that’s at the end of the film,” he told Us. “Just the way that she was able to channel her emotions into all those multiple different moments of the story in the day was really … it blew me away.”
Skincare hits theaters on Friday, August 16.
With reporting by Kat Pettibone and Nikaline McCarley
